The Book of the War (novel)
The Book of the War was the first novel in the Faction Paradox series.
Edited by Lawrence Miles and written collaboratively by more than ten authors, The Book of the War was formatted like an encyclopedia, with a number of stories spread across multiple alphabetically-sorted entries. In each entry, some words were emphasised in bold to point to other entries with that name, enabling the reader to jump around the book and read related entries.
The summary on this page follows the "intended" reading order specified in the Design Specs for Advanced Users, which were published on a hidden page of the Faction Paradox website,[2] rather than alphabetically as they appear in the book. Two errors were deliberately included in the "Design Specs": the nonexistent entry "Scarratt's Group" in "The A-Z of the War"; and the exclusion of an "easter egg" entry which was not linked to in other entries and therefore unfindable except by reading in alphabetical order, which we have elected to place at the extreme end of the summary.
Publisher's summary
The Great Houses: Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.
The Enemy: Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.
Faction Paradox: Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage… assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.
The War: A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect."
Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past…
Alt text
The War so far (in highlights); the location of the exact centre of history; the lo-tech way to break into the Eleven-Day Empire; the truth about gravity spiders; the dangers of investigating Violent Unknown Events; the art of breeding your own timeship; a short history of the various ends of humanity; the fate of the Grandfather's Arm; the secrets of removing yourself from history while still leaving yourself free to interfere; a brief interruption from the future; where to meet every human being who ever lived; how to bring your world to the attention of the Spiral Politic using 23,000 corpses; why the War-time powers never recruit celebrities; the problems of running a time-active brothel; on telling the difference between the afterlife and the trailer; banality as a weapon of War; the Faction Paradox guide to Hollywood; and how the Sixth Wave revealed the truth about the enemy without even trying.
Plot
The Core Entries
Causalities of War
A War which "at this stage (…) remains the War, not yet having enough of its mass in a single region or era to be given a more specific title" has been raging across space and time for 50 subjective years. A book is published to serve as a guide to this War, and opens with a list of the main participants.
The Great Houses, an ancient, voyeuristic civilisation of demigods who remain the "central power" of this "War Era universe", think themselves to be "parts of the historical process much more than a people". Though they fought another war at the very beginning of history, they still consider the idea of having a military ridiculous when the enemy revealed themselves "mere decades" before the start of the new War, they had become complacent. One of the Houses' errors is failing to truly understand the enemy, viewing them as a species or faction when they are really "a kind of all-consuming process", so the book elects to not mention the enemy's name, even if it does have one, because its anonymous authors believes the name would be a distraction from the essence of the enemy.
Despite their misapprehension, the Houses do adapt, and establish a House Military whose cohorts are bred for war. The House Military has begun to operate at "a safe distance" from the "old academicians". Also responding to the changes is Faction Paradox, a rogue House leaves the Homeworld in the years leading up to the War because they foresee the "vulgarity" to which their kind will soon descend and decide to get a head start. They start recruiting humans into their ranks and operating underground as a sort of criminal or terrorist organisation, seemingly hoping that the bigger sides of the War will wipe each other out and leave them to pick over the leftovers. To build themselves an army, they pervert a human offshoot into the fetishistic Remote, "the barbarians of the Spiral Politic", but they soon become so unpredictable that they fallen out of the Faction's control.
The Celestis also leave the Homeworld before the War, though they were not so much a House as an "elite cadre" of interventionists. Fearing that the Great Houses' defeat could mean their erasure from history, they preemptively excise themselves from the material world, becoming little more than ghosts. They manifest themselves as gods to "those individuals who've been tricked into worshipping them" but wield little real power and are considered demonic traitors by the rest of the War-mongers.
The Great Houses label all species not connected to themselves or the Enemy's power-bases as "lesser species". This includes humanity, but the volume is also, "for obvious reasons", concerned with them. However, although the War has intersected with Earth's history as early as 1752, they are important to the major powers not in their own right but because of the time-active capabilities of humanity's descendants, the posthuman sects, and of the mysterious City of the Saved, "a region of dubious origin which exists beyond the end of causality, and which seems to act as a "backup file" for the entire human species".
In any case, it is often observed that the War is slowly "turning every culture into a War culture", which the possible implication that "one day every individual in recordable time will become either a child of the Houses or a child of the enemy".
The Spiral Politic
The Spiral Politic is described. The most common way of describing the structure of the War Era universe, it is not a physical map of the universe or causality, but a symbolic map of the ways in which different planets' histories do or do not interact with each other. The Spiral Politic as it is known in the current version of reality was created by the Great Houses with them at the centre through the event known as the anchoring of the thread; the more closely related a world's history is to that of the Homeworld, the closer to the centre of a 2D map of the Spiral Politic it appears, and the more stable it normally is, while worlds on the outer fringes, far from the Houses' control, are constantly shifting in their relative positions as their histories are altered by shifting War-time alliances with one side or another.
On the whole, the Houses rather wish everything on the map stayed as still as possible, but this is an increasingly thin hope as the fifty years of War cause the map to shift more and more. Much terminology exists describing the different "types" of worlds on the map, based on the ways in which they do or do not "move", including shooting star worlds, Time-Front Worlds, Scarred Worlds, Remote Worlds, Posthuman Worlds, Frontier Worlds, and the confusingly-named Non-Worlds (which do not physically exist in the universe but are still causally connected to the Spiral). It is also rumoured that certain areas in the Houses' maps of the Spiral Politic describe time-active individuals with an outsized influence on history rather than actual planets.
Other universes exist, in the form of "separate bubbles of matter and energy cut off from the Spiral Politic by immeasurable stretches of un-space". However, it is widely believed that crossing these distances is basically impossible, with only the Yssgaroth having ever managed to intrude on the Spiral Politic from the "outside".
The Great Houses
The Great Houses' recorded history begins with the anchoring of the thread. This event would later come to be understood as "merely" the point when the Homeworlders built their timeships and sealed their world in a bubble of enclosed time. However, it actually represents the point when they ascended to become "something 'other', something too fundamental to exist merely within the confines of the newly-created Spiral Politic" — gods, in a sense, although the word "suggests something primal, potent and ambitious" while individual members of the Houses became ontologically sterile and shrivelled and static as a result of making themselves anchors of static history. Indeed, they become biologically sterile, "not necessarily by design", around the time of the anchoring, forcing them to develop breeding engines that artificially weave together "base matter and biodata" to create new individuals. They also learn how to make themselves immortal, "at least in theory".
Deprived of organic evolution or the "spur" of mortality, the Houses remain stuck in a form of cultural stasis for the following ten million years during which they wield absolute power. They have little interest in high art (which they find incomprehensible), history (since everything in their being trends towards the status-quo), physical pleasure (their continued organic existence bothers them slightly, though not enough to discard their bodies, as that would be too radical). They occupy themselves with little more than "humanitarian" interventions to prevent lesser time-active parties from damaging causality, which is really born of self-interest too, being that history is an extension of them.
Eventually, the status quo begins to crumble with the Imperator Presidency, the rise of House Paradox, and of course the War itself. Now, fifty years in, life for the Houses on their own world remains as stuffy as ever, but their influence on the wider universe is much more immediate, with the War King and his agents steering the history of many worlds directly; moreover, allegiances are now split, with some Newblood bloodlines allying themselves with the House Military over the traditional Ruling Houses. In short, if the Great Houses are gods, then the War is a new War in Heaven.
The House Military
For most of its history, the Homeworld had no real army; symbolic constabularies were ordered around by various Houses to "keep the peace" but had little to do, as there was very little crime. When armed intervention was needed in the outside universe, constructs known as casts were employed. However, in the decades before the War, in addition to small flashes of the War to come, the Homeworld becomes more familiar to the outside universe and various doomed armies try to invade the Homeworld physically. Although they are unsuccessful, they make plain the constabularies' near-total uselessness.
This leads some of the more restless Houses, Oldblood and Newblood alike, to band together into a more effective House Military. Although they remain officially part of the same political entity as the other Houses, there is a clear ideological schism between their interpretation of the Protocols and the traditionalist Houses', which everybody in the field recognises. Indeed, many of the "time-front troops" spend their whole lives in the outside universe, which warps their understanding of reality far beyond the minds that a lifetime safe within the Homeworld's bubble of history could ever mould.
The early Waves of House Military soldiers are still humanoid, but even before the War, select field agents had been the subject of experiments with forms of regeneration refined for military purpose so that each new incarnation was "stronger, faster, and better-equipped", drifting gradually from the classic human form. As early as the Third Wave, forced regen missions have become a reality. At first the changes merely create more resistant or telepathic humanoids, but it soon becomes clear to the soldiers themselves that the form of regeneration with which they've been primed is designed to eventually turn them into totally inhuman war machines. House authorities reply to complaints from Second Wave veterans by pointing out that if they really wish to avoid this fate, all they need to do is fight so well that they avoid getting killed.
This development naturally widens the schism between the House Military and the ruling Houses: the force-regenerated soldiers simultaneously resent their fate, and come to view the Oldbloods as puny, weak, different, "and ultimately untrustworthy". It is forecast that if left unchecked for a few more centuries, the schism could result in House Military and regular Great Houses coming to be seen as two different species altogether, with a civil war between the two offshoots becoming inevitable.
The Celestis
Another group which appears in the centuries leading up to the War are a movement of interventionists who pursue personal ambition and flout the non-interference policy, committing multiple retro-genocides on lesser species without the approval of the Ruling Houses. They manipulate the politics of the other Great Houses and the Presidency, even sometimes going as far as to carry out assassinations, because they believe the Houses should act more like imperious Gods, actively reshaping the universe to their needs at their whim.
When War predictions notify them of the existence of a foe "just as 'divine'", they are thrown into existential despair by the idea of not only being killed, but being erased from history altogether, if the Homeworld were to lose the war. In a move that baffles the rest of the universe, they decide to dodge out of being erased from history by erasing themselves from history. Specifically, they use an engineer forced-paradox state to erase their physical forms from history while living on as disembodied minds and ideas, having banked on the fact that god-like beings like themselves never really needed physical bodies to hold court. They found a new base of operations called Mictlan on the "outer skin" of the universe and begin to call themselves the Celestial House.
However, they are widely reviled by the other Houses and the universe at large as traitors who abandoned their homeworld in its hour of need. Moreso than the bored gods they hoped to become and continue to believe themselves to be, they are viewed as demons, a state of affairs not helped by their habit of manifesting in monstrous physical forms to mortals, or theirconstant need to strike "Faustian bargains" with members of the lesser species to sustain their own existence: as living ideas, the Celestis can only survive as long as they are believed in. Having retained power over life and death, they lure these victims with promises of immortality and make them take their Mark of Indenture, which allows the Celestis to trap their minds in Mictlan forever after the destruction of their original physical bodies.
Insisting that they are above the Spiral Politic rather than parasites dependent on it, the Celestis have a limited impact on the War. However, some of them do get involved, claiming that they view it only as a game. Though they sometimes help their old compatriots of the Homeworld, they also sell conceptual entities to the enemy, for which reason they are not accepted as allies by the House Military, many units of which are ordered to destroy on sight the entities which the "proper" Homeworlders refer to as "the spineless monstrosities". However, they rarely enter the fray themselves in any case, preferring to act through their Investigators.
Faction Paradox
Headed by an epigraph by Cousin Eliza of the Faction Paradox Military Wing, the entry on Faction Paradox starts with a disclaimer that common encapsulations of the Faction as either a cult or a crime syndicate, while not inaccurate, miss the mark on the true essence of the organisation, which is more of an unending carnival existing in parody of the universe: the Faction does not act to acquire power, nor out of any "inherent sense of sadism", but simply to make a point and out of a sense that "the universe would be lacking if nobody did it".
The history of what would become Faction Paradox starts on the Homeworld, five centuries before the War. The Homeworld is experiencing a sense of unease and more changes than in the million years prior. The Ruling Houses are naturally outraged when a member of an old, eccentric bloodline comes before them to announce he is founding a new Great House, something which had remained enshrined in law but which had not been done in long ages. Compounding the shock is his declaration of the new family's name — "House Paradox", with him becoming "Grandfather Paradox" — is, according to legend, his attire, includes the the first Faction Paradox skull mask. This fashion choice is of particular significance on the Homeworld because the rejection of organics there at this time was so great that many of the witnesses to the declaration had very probably never seen a skull before, and likely did not realise what the Grandfather was even wearing.
As the Grandfather anticipated, the Ruling Houses are too stunned and appalled by what he presents that they "let the matter slip noisily by" rather than thinking to veto his decision while there's still time. However, the nascent House Paradox wastes no time in beginning to experiment with alternative time-dynamics, in obvious breach of the Homeworld's laws on how history should work. This provide grounds for their exile from the Homeworld, adopting the name of Faction Paradox and becoming the first cuckoo-House, recruiting members of the lesser species into its rank instead of relying on breeding engines.
However, on the cusp of the War, the Grandfather deletes himself from existence. Leader-less, the Faction is made more practical by the necessities of War and becomes a political-criminal organisation spanning the entire Spiral Politic, with cabals in hundreds of locations, agents on hundreds of worlds, and a predilection for "stirring up even more trouble" between the other Houses and the enemy. They try to build themselves an army in the form of the Remote so as to boost themselves up to the status of a major power with a chance against the big two, but these crude attempts at power-base-building are decimated by the Second Wave, and they retreat to a more patient, calculating demeanour, waiting to pick over what will be left once the two main sides have annihilated each other.
Now, fifty years into the War, the Faction are beginning to recover from the Second Wave, with links being reestablished between the Eleven-Day Empire and the diaspora of Faction cabals. They hope that the Houses' now-total commitment to fighting the Enemy means that they can live in relative peace from now on and focus on their work — "whatever that work may turn out to be".
The Faction Paradox Family
Inset in the Book's entry on the Faction is an overview of the ranks used by the Faction and their significance, icluding, in order, Little Siblings, Cousins, Parents, and Godparents. The Grandfather himself is also listed, in an entry which reveals that he "never actually existed — and has now never actually existed for over two hundred years", having purposefully erased himself from time. He left behind a few relics, such as the knife purportedly used in the Act of Severance, and his name is rarely invoked in vain by members of the Faction because they believe that too much invocation might summon him back into existence, and that this would only irritate him.
The Remote
Shortly before the War, while operating as a criminal syndicate and trying to build proper power-bases on various planets, the Faction become fascinated by planets in humanity's expansionist era where the colonists become so completely driven by the "signals" of their media that they become more important in understanding these humans than physical geography or indeed any other factor. The Faction, unfamiliar with the concept of mass media (which don't exist on the Homeworld), are entranced and begin to think of these media signals as a different form of the loa they themselves worship: non-physical cultural constructs regulating their respective societies without being in the power of any individual or group within them.
At first the Faction's experiments take the form of introducing new concepts — new spirits-in-the-making — to the media of preexisting colonies and watching them grow and reshape the society around them. However, after the Great Houses take notice and begin wiping out "infected" societies, the Faction make up for lost time by putting their new knowledge to use creating "true" Remote societies ex nihilo. These absolutist Remote colonies no longer had conventional media, but instead a single mass transmission system at their core, with every inhabitant picking them up directly through ear implants. The Faction hope to use these Remote as an army, although early experiments such as "the entirely ludicrous assault on Simia-KK98" prove less than encouraging.
Before long, the master-plan begins to fall apart due to the Second Wave's coordinated genocide of all groups and colonies connected to the Faction. Desperate, the Faction turn to "evacuating, crypto-forming, and sometimes even hiding" entire planets. Becoming restless due to the saturation of War-related propaganda in their signals, many of the Remote blaze their own trails across the Spiral Politic without any actual orders from the Faction, with only two of the original Remote colonies staying put. As they come into contact with the media of other worlds they invade, their Faction programming becomes ever more garbled, until the Remote become complete anarchists whose only stable directive is to make war on "the ruling powers of the Spiral Politic" — whoever they might happen to be.
Lesser Species
Before the War, the term of "lesser species" was used by the Great Houses for all species other than themselves. However, in the new state of affairs, Newblood Houses have taken to using it to refer to non-time-active species, granting that other time-travelling races count as higher species. The Book acknowledges that this makes some sense, insofar as there is, per the Protocols of the Great Houses, a deep and important difference between the biodata of time-travellers and non-time-travellers.
In the War era, posthumanity soon becomes one of the so-called "lesser species" with the most insistent claim to being equals of the great War-time powers, because much of their "territory" is inaccessible to the Great Houses' observation, and is therefore of key strategic significance to them as they fear the enemy may hide out there. Indeed, some posthumans, including the posthuman "War Goddess" known as the Immaculata Formosii, form actual alliances with the enemy and come to think of themselves as "full-time War participants".
In contrast, some posthuman castes remain proud of their status as non-time-active being, due to a belief that time-travellers forsake their "true identity" and their destiny as part of altering their biodata to travel in time: whatever the Great Houses say of their "Homeworld", they fundamentally do not belong anywhere, being little more than "friend-of-a-friend stories who happen to be wearing badly-fitting bodies". This logic is not taken very seriously by the authors of the Book, who seem to gently chide humanity's belief that it has a truly special, rather than coincidental, role in the War.
Yssgaroth
When the Great Houses carry out the anchoring of the thread, constructing history as it's now known, they make it in such a way that its meta-structure is held together by various node points spread throughout the Spiral Politic. Due to the tension they are under, these are also "weak points" in the fabric of the universe, where, in a very real sense, the "foam-structures of the continuume" are weakened by the strain.
This proves devastating when something crosses over from outside the universe into the newly-founded Spiral Politic through the Caldera. Although perceived as a specific individual from the alter-dimensional species, later thinkers would go on to speculate that the Yssgaroth may be a huge, gestalt entity capable of splitting itself into smaller drones, or even that the Yssgaroth may be more of a phenomenon than a species, an antibody system of the foreign universe trying to defend itself against contact with the Great Houses' universe, appearing as a haze of ghastly monsters due to the Great Houses projecting their own deepest fears onto the "areas of hostile anti-structure".
Whatever the Yssgaroth's true nature, the crossing over of the "true" Yssgaroth at the Caldera allows weaker creatures of a similar ilk, referred to as "servants of the Yssgaroth" by the Houses, to begins warming all across history, entering via rifts that form at the node points. An unimaginably terrible war ensues, with whole worlds being lost to the cruelty of the Yssgaroth so thoroughly that the Great Houses have no other choice but to put them out of their misery via retro-genocide. The war ultimately ends in a victory for the Great Houses, who successfully seal all the breaches, covering them up with forced-matter shells to disguise them as planets.
However, because it is in Yssgaroth biomass's nature to "hybridise and corrupt", traces of the Yssgaroth corruption remain throughout history. On Earth, Arabic and Middle Eastern traditions term humans turned "malformed and predatory" by the Yssgaroth taint as "the Mal'akh". The Yssgaroth war having occurred in the infancy of the structure of history itself also means that all cultures in the universe create legends about vampires and similar monsters, even if they never had any actual contact with the Yssgaroth.
When the War in Heaven starts, proving wrong the commonly-accepted notion that the Yssgaroth was a "war to end all wars", some of the older Houses suggest that the only way a hostile force might exist within ordered history is if it was placed there by outside influence, meaning the enemy must have been propped up by the Yssgaroth. However, this is considered unlikely by most, as the enemy is at least "civilised, cultured, and intelligent enough to ahve an agenda beyond pure destruction".
The History of Faction Paradox
The Anchoring of the Thread
The early universe is a "structureless" place where time has yet to coalesce into the linear structure of history as it would become known. However, sensing that it will eventually harden into something more solid, the Great Houses come to fear how other intelligences might influence the shape of the future, with "early deep-time explorations" performed by the Houses' pioneers confirming the existence, somewhere in the possible future, of things too powerful for the Houses to destroy. After a few clumsy attempts to avert the individual existence of such creatures, the Houses devise a grander solution: to enact the calcification of history themselves and stitch themselves, "or at least their culture", into that very culture, creating a structure that would allow creatures like them to monitor and manipulate time in the rest of the universe. One of the perks of this "bonding" would be "virtual indestructibility" as a species, at the cost of infertility and cultural stagnancy.
Committing to this plan, the Great Houses begin to embed some of their proto-timeships at various strategic points in the "formative future", while building the machine-heart on the Homeworld itself. Later lore also speaks of a single, enormous device, although the Book's narrative voice is skeptical of those accounts. Eventually, after all is made ready, a ceremony is held in the centre of the machine-heart as the "elite representatives" gather, standing in for their respective Houses, while field agents take their places in their timeships at the other ends of each of the "threads".
This day is also the first day of the first War in Heaven as things "far, far worse" than the possible future species the Houses hoped to erase enter the continuum at the site of the machine-heart, their first, "primal manifestation" destroying the machinery and creating the caldera at the centre of the newborn structure of history. After the end of this war against the Yssgaroth, the caldera became a cornerstone of the Houses' culture, and the only trace of the Yssgaroth's existence the Houses deigned acknowledge, House Paradox's armour notwithstanding. In the era of the second War, it would also become of great strategic importance, being a "prime target" for the enemy.
Faction Paradox Armour
Their intricate bone armour, "part weapon and part carnival costume" is the most infamous "fetish" of Faction Paradox, raising endless questions about whether it was designed for battle, for ritual, or simply to irritate the Great Houses. However, the origin of the bones of the default armour is poorly understood.
They appear to be the skeletons of two-metre-tall humanoids with bloated, bat-like skulls, and the Faction's claim is that they are the skulls of Homeworlders from an alternate timeline where the Houses lost their war against the Yssgaroth. The Houses vigorously deny this, in line with their denial of there being any such thing as alternate timelines, and even some Faction researchers believe that this simple story is incomplete at best.
Indeed, it is known that all the bones used to create the classic suits of armour were sourced from the same place: an "abomination's graveyard" discovered by the Grandfather's four Godfather-lieutenants, likely by stepping through the caldera. The first set of Faction armour was worn by the Grandfather at the Audience of the Ruling Houses, and later lore depicts it as an extremely stylised example of the form, its huge helmet completely covering the Grandfather's head, with each of the Godfather-lieutenants having a similar but subtly different suit of armour.
At any rate, the modern Faction is no stranger to alterations to the basic design. Many lesser Cousins are never issued a full armour, but simply a ceremonial mask. Less radically, Cousins of the Military Wing stationed in the Eleven-Day Empire typically wear a lighter, more combat-ready variant of the armour, which leaves their face exposed and seems to be made from smaller Mal'akh creatures. Some experiment further, with Belial notoriously using the skull of a mammoth for his mask.
Audience of the Ruling Houses
Of the few Audiences of the Ruling Houses held before the War, two involved the Grandfather.
The first is a formality which sees him formally declaring that he is about to found a new House and that new House-Foundations will accordingly be "rooted into the Homeworld's reproductive matrix". The second, on the other hand, four hundred years before the War, was a disciplinary hearing where the Grandfather was called to accounts to answer allegations that House Paradox was carrying out illegal experiments with alter-time structures. Even though he is wearing full Yssgaroth bone armour, "at best a message of defiance, at worst a thinly-veiled threat", he is allowed to walk free. Despite later mythologised accounts suggesting this was because he made some brilliant, mesmerising speech, the Book speculates that he didn't have to say a word: the sheer fact was that no member of the Houses had ever engaged in something so starkly counter-cultural as death-fetishism, and, bereft of any law or precedent to fall back on, the House representatives flatly did not know how to even begin to react, sitting in appalled silence until the Grandfather walked away. As the Book pithily remarks, "House Paradox wouldn't be brought to 'justice' for many years, and by that time the Homeworld would be a very different place".
The Caldera
The caldera, being the site where history "literally began" and the exact centre of the meta-structure of history, is the point where all threads of history converge. During the War, various parties begin to realise that this fact could be exploited. Because the Great Houses are connected to every one of the "threads", it would be possible for anyone with control over the caldera to alter their very identity, down to their history and their language. This drives the Houses to become increasingly paranoid about the possibility of an enemy incursion on the Homeworld, the driving force behind the Nine Homeworlds project.
However, the caldera's strategic position also has its uses. There is at least "one abortive attempt" to introduce "foreign matter" into the caldera to make the Houses stronger. Furthermore, they begin to make increased use of the way that, "at least in theory," machinery connected to the caldera could be used to draw out information from any part of space-time and predict how any given alteration to causality would pan out. It is even theorised that it could be used as an ad hoc communication network, although this is somewhat dubious given that the message would warp history on its way down a "thread".
The Book's entry on the caldera ends on speculation of what would happen if the War were to take an unexpected turn involving the Homeworld being "removed" from physical reality along with the caldera: it theorises that only non-worlds like the Eleven-Day Empire or Mictlan would be likely to remain unscathed.
The Eleven-Day Empire
James Thomson III visits a location where he has a vision of a London whose sky burns red even though none of it is actually burning. Thomson sees the black silhouettes of buildings such as the Abbey of Westminster and the throne of Parliament, but, when he runs into one of them for shelter, finds that they are insubstantial and realises that they are "the ghosts of buildings each had burnt".
Thomson's summary of these events in his Journals, published in 1905, prefaces the Book's entry on the location itself: the Faction's stronghold known as the Eleven-Day Empire. Its story begins in 1752, a year when Britain is "the most significant nation on the face of the Earth", being, if not necessarily the most powerful country on Earth, at least wildly successful economically, and a model state by the canons of the Age of Reason. Its cultural shift involves industrialisation (one particular pocket watch manufactured in 1752 will one day go on to be used by the Great Houses during the babel project for symbolic reasons), but also the growing conceptualisation of time by the population.
The overall cultural shift ends up calling for an update from the old Julian calendar to the modern Gregorian calendar. Catching up means the country will skip directly from the night of 2 September to the morning 14 September. This causes riots among those in the population who believe that eleven days are genuinely being taken from their lifetime — but despite widespread ridicule, these people have a point. The days do in fact go somewhere: namely, they are ceremonially purchased by Grandfather Paradox from King George II as part of the Gregorian Compact. Although this provides the Faction with a spare bolthole, it is also an experiment to prove that the Grandfather can circumvent the Great Houses' version of seeing time and use the same technique, albeit on a smaller scale, to bring other perspectives on time into reality. Naturally, although he has yet to officially rebel at this point, the Grandfather does not tell the Ruling Houses quite how he achieved this, let alone how to access the Empire.
The resulting alter-space is dubbed, "not without irony", the Eleven-Day Empire. To be able to use it, as they have done by the time of the Book's writing, for "over four hundred years", the Faction "burn" space-time from beyond the borders of London to extend the survival of London itself. The city proves more than sufficient, however, as most of the Faction's field agents never visit the Empire itself, remaining in cabals spread across the Spiral Politic: by and large, only the Mothers and Fathers and their "personal students and attendants" reside in the Empire on a perennial basis, even after the House Military's Second Wave forces more of the elite to take refuge in the Empire than before. Interestingly, the Empire's buildings do not necessarily mimic the buildings of 1752; the Parliament buildings are the post-1832, rebuilt ones, which is, accoridng to Morlock, because the modern buildings "cast longer shadows".
With no means of accessing it known to anyone external to the Faction (the existence of such sites as Fashion Paradox in the real London being widely understood as more of a case of subconscious influence than of literal portals between the two Londons), the Empire remains extremely secure. As of the Book's writing, the only attempt to invade the Empire was the "ill-fated" 1834 Clockwork Ouroboros affair, and the Military Wing's deployment of "armed flyers" to guard the city is widely thought to be a pointless gesture.
Fashion Paradox, London
From its earliest recorded history, the London parish of St. Giles-in-the-Field seems designed to appeal to Faction Paradox sensibilities: first a carnival venue and, later, home to the gallows of St. Giles' Circus and their symbolic Resurrection Gate, it is also where the first victims of the plague are found in 1664. A century later, it is where the Gregorian Compact was signed by agents of House Paradox and agents of George II, bringing the Eleven-Day Empire into existence. It continues to be a site of carnivalesque death thereafter, becoming the location of he "fatal beer-flood of 1818". By the 21st century, the exact location where the Compact was sealed, now located on New Oxford Street between a fantasy bookshop and a marijuana café, an "unlikely memorial" to Faction Paradox, of uncertain origin, has emerged: a "goth, retro and fetishist clothing store" named Fashion Paradox, seemingly by pure coincidence. Its shop window is adorned with "mannequins of indeterminate sex" who are, every Halloween, decorated with skull masks.
The Gregorian Compact
As documented in the secret records of the Service, shortly before the United Kingdom officially switches from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, a delegation of House Paradox emerges in 18th century Portsmouth, led by one of Grandfather Paradox’s four original Godfather-lieutenants. The Grandfather’s choice of the 18th century as this point of contact is the subject of much subsequent speculation, but may have been driven by the fact that this era is the heyday of the Caribbean voodoo cults to which the Faction’s own witchcraft is often compared.
At any rate, the Faction envoys, perceived as a foreign dignitaries from somewhere in "the lands of the east", are given a warm welcome, with a first reception being held where the Godfather first emerged. Later, a second is held at St. James's Palace in London, "much to the Star Chamber’s alarm". There, the Godfather performs what is recorded as "an amusement", performing a Shadow Dance with the four arms his shadow possessed, each wielding a different weapon. He then has a lengthy discussion with the King himself, discussing the possibility of war between England and the Faction before coming to an agreement, whose exact terms remain obscure as far as what the Faction gave England goes.
On the Faction’s end, the British are given "sufficient ritual methods to remove the lost even days when the calendar changed from the Julian to the Gregorian version in September"; House Paradox then literally takes away the excised days, using them to create the Eleven-Day Empire, supposedly "the first alter-time environment to be set apart from the history dictated by the Great Houses". Subsequently, the Gregorian Compact gains notoriety among War powers as "the first ‘official’ pact between House (later Faction) Paradox and humanity".
History
The difference between "History" and "Time" is highlighted, with the former having a strong psychological component and having been laid down (alongside "many of the 'natural' laws of creation") at the anchoring of the thread as part of the Protocols of the Great Houses. The Houses effectively "built" history, "engineering it as a complex memetic structure running through the entire length of observed time", although "certain parts of the far future" remained beyond their reach. Every sentient species has its own history, but (with "certain key exceptions") they are all "supported" by the "infrastructure set into the universe itself" by the "deeper" Protocols. With their bodies directly linked to "the continuum itself", the children fo the Great Houses are in a very real sense "part of time"; thus, some observe that their greater consideration with the preservation of history than with the preservation of life is almost an acknowledgement "that they're made out of pure history themselves".
The Book speculates that "if history is the stuff of which they’re made, then the constant skirmishes between Faction Paradox and the other Houses are basically racial struggles", since a modification to the structure of history, such as those the Faction typically tries to enact, is by definition an addition to the Houses' gene-pool. It also highlights the fact that linear history is not the only way one could choose to perceive time, as evidenced by non-linear cultures, and points out that humanity was well on its way to becoming such a culture in the 21st century, only to turn away from that path with such abruptness that it "could be argued" that this decline must have been "organised by outside forces specifically to stop this happening".
The Imperator Presidency
Around 1200 years before the War, after a long period of stagnancy which is widely reported as lasting ten million years, mysterious "faults" begin to appear in the Homeworld's supposedly-infallible breeding-engines. The cause of the malfunction is extremely mysterious, given that the Homeworld's "unusual relationship to the rest of time" was meant to "prime" it to "resist entropy": if a flaw existed in the biodata within the machines, then "such flaws must have been present in the systems for far longer than anyone had liked to imagine". Either way it produces a number of "eccentricities" among the new generation of archons, including "four major 'mutations'", including the future War King and Grandfather Paradox.
Initially, "very little [is] said" about the abnormal loomings; having "no experience of even admitting that somthing might be wrong", the ruling Houses are left to assume that "the great academies of the Houses" will be able to "iron out any little problems in its new members' biodata". Three hundred years later, however, these hopes are proven wrong when one of the major mutations, a scion of House Dvora, ascends to the Presidency and takes on the title of the Imperator. Becoming a "brutal, mono-maniacal God-Emperor", he orders military involvement in the affairs of the lesser species and tries to spearhead an effort to preemptively unmake and recreate the Protocols and structure of history, with the aim of "adapting" history to better suit the Houses' own needs, and particularly the Dvoras'.
Developing a cult of personality, whose most surprising trait is that the archon even has sufficient personality to form a cult around, he recruits followers from the lesser species by "playing on their expectations that the rulers of the Houses would be inscrutable, unstoppable Gods". However, the overly destructive nature of his crusade eventually leads his own Order of the Weal to "denounce" him among the other Houses. Undeterred, he "simply remove[s] his loyal supporters from the Homeworld altogether" and continues his intergalactic war with his army of followers and mercenaries. For the first time in their history, the Homeworlders find themselves the centre of attention among other spacefaring species. Though in their helpless panic it takes them "an absurdly long time" to formulate a reaction, they eventually decide to make a "desperate attempt to pacify the Spiral Politic" by capturing and executing the Imperator, so that the outside universe will see that its newly-uncovered "gods" have a "code of justice", and thereby be dissuaded from attacking the Homeworld directly in reprisal for the Imperator's actions.
Allegedly "the first deliberate killing of a Great House member since the foundation of House society", this rash decision shocks the other Houses to their core, and almost seems to validate the Imperator's own violent ideology. The "Imperator crisis" goes on to "trigger the rise of the intervention groups" and "fuel the creation of Faction Paradox", being viewed in hindsight as "the moment of catastrophe for the Houses", possibly a portent or retro-reflection of "the futur War itself"; more broadly, it precipitates a "thaw" of stagnant House society in subsequent centuries, with political alliances forming and shifting at an unprecedented pace, and thoughts of war and violence that would have been unthinkable a thousand years prior becoming commonplace by the final years leading up to the War.
The Imperator himself would no doubt have been proud.
Intervention
In the aftermath of the Imperator crisis, due to the Protocols of Linearity, the Homeworld finds itself with a live, "real-time" connection to the various eras touched by the Imperator's crusade, a situation which fosters increasing paranoia among the Great Houses. A number of Newbloods declare that they "should intervene in the affairs of the lesser species before they intervene in ours". Soon the Homeworld becomes rife with "intervention groups wanting diplomatic relations with the lesser species, intervention groups wanting complete control of the lesser species, counter-intervention groups like the Imperator’s own bastard offspring the Order of the Weal", and even greater disturbances follow, including the foundation of House Paradox and the brief instutition of a rival Presidency on the "semi-developed world" of Dronid.
Eventually, even the Ruling Houses themselves catch the intervention "bug" and organise official, legal interventions in the timestreams — mainly to begin to fight the unknown outside force whose influence they are beginning to detect in the Spiral Politic, in a blind, chaotic fashion which mostly amounts to sending House agents to cripple or even erase any species which shows signs of developing serious temporal technology of its own. In fact, although popularly viewed as a repressive measure against revolutionary tendencies, the eventual imprisonment of House Paradox's founder-Grandfather could just as easily be seen "as a sign that the ruling Houses were now prepared to be utterly pragmatic in their attempts to keep the Homeworld under control".
Regardless, as the War looms closer, the "most influential" faction of interventionists remove themselves from the Homeworld to become the Lords of the Celestis, forever staining the overall legacy of the pre-War interventionists as "traitors, the irst rats to desert the sinking ship".
Protocols of Linearity
The Protocols of Linearity are the most frequently discussed out of the many Protocols of the Great Houses, dictating the limits by which the Great Houses abide in the process of time travel. Chiefly, these Protocols state that it is forbidden to travel backwards in the Homeworld's own history, and also that "whenever Homeworld-time meets outside-time, the two should become analogous" such that "if an agent of one of the Houses leaves the Homeworld for, say, five years then when he returns home he’ll ind that ive years have passed there as well". In the context of the War, both the Houses and the enemy mysteriously seem to abide by Linearity in nearly all cases (as evidenced by the fact that the pre-War capture of Compassion on the orders of the War King would have been much more successful if the House agent despatched for the purpose had been willing to use time-travel to look in all possible hiding places of Compassion's "at once"). There is much speculation as to why this might be, from the Houses being unable to free themselves from such deeply-held Laws even if they wanted to, to a secret agreement between the Houses and the enemy on the rules of engagement, to both sides simply fearing the consequences of the escalation this would represent.
Loa
While the Great Houses model the workings of time and history as "high-order mathematical structures" which are "certainly complex" but, provided one has access to "a large enough computer, say, one capable of decrypting entire universes", ultimately "explicable as nothing more than numbers". Faction Paradox, however, champions the view that the processes of time are sufficiently complex as to be sentient: time is "occupied, even guarded by entities", intangible spirit which they term loa after the similar beings posited by Earth voodoo, able to "protect, beguile, curse and possess anybody who tries to cross their boundaries".
The Book's narration points out that viewing history as a mass of living organisms would make a lot of sense, as "if history evolves, then it’d certainly explain how the Houses can now be at War even though they specifically designed history to make War impossible". How literally the knowingly-campy Faction take this is a matter of some debate, especially given that "elder members such as Godfather Morlock have been known to invent loa out of thin air whenever necessary", but in any event the Faction's rituals typically work by attempting to "prime" the loa, and a great clustering of them are said to guard the Eleven-Day Empire.
Some Faction agents who have "studied the culture of the lesser species" have also come to theorise that culturally-significant figures from fictional heroes to minor celebrities can also be thought of as "mythic, symbolic entit[ies], with an existence beyond the material world", capable of influencing individuals' behaviours in very deep ways; taking literally the notion that this makes all these figures "minor loa" in their own right is what leads the Faction to create the Remote.
London (Eighteenth Century)
Although commonly thought of as a duplicate of 18th century London, the Eleven-Day Empire's geography is somewhat more complex, being an anachronistic accumulation of symbols including anything from the 20th century MI6 building, where the Faction develops new weapons, to a version of Trafalgar Square where a statue of Grandfather Paradox has replaced Lord Nelson's and the lions have been turned into sphinxes wearing Faction Paradox masks. Of particular notice are "the Stacks", the Empire's ghost of the London Underground, where Morlock makes his lair directly beneath the Natural History Museum. Furthermore, it must be remembered that of the 18th century's three genuinely distinct cities which would go on to make up "London" — Southwark, Westminster, and the City of London proper — the Faction only controls Westminster, with the shadow-City being the domain of the Unkindnesses.
Godfather Morlock
to be written
House Paradox
to be written
Recruitment (Faction Paradox)
to be written
Ritual (Faction Paradox)
to be written
The Act of Severance
to be written
Sombras que Corta
to be written
The Stacks
to be written
Father Stendec
to be written
Tower Hill
to be written
The Unkindnesses
to be written
New Palace of Westminster
to be written
The History of Earth
The Analytical Engine
In the 1800s, scientist Charles Babbage nearly built a device known as a "difference engine" - a precursor to the modern computer. This was followed by the "analytical engine", a device that was able to reprogram itself. Though the government of England dropped its funding of Babbage, the Star Chamber (using Ada Byron as a cats' paw) began funding the analytical engine in the hope that it could be used against Faction Paradox.
The Book of Enoch
The Book of Enoch is a book within the Biblical Apocrypha which details the revolt of a group of anakim (led by Azazel) and their mating with humans, which leads to a race of beastly cannibalistic peoples. Due to their creation of these hideous monsters, the rest of the anakim fight and defeat the rebels. It is postulated that this Book of the Bible was inspired by the origins of the Mal'akh.
Captain Sir Burton
to be written
George Gordon, Sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale
to be written
Ada Byron
to be written
Canon per Tonos
to be written
The Clockwork Ouroboro s
to be written
The Eleven-Day Empire: The 1834 Attack
to be written
Ghost Clusters
to be written
The Grand Families
to be written
Grindlay's Warehouse
to be written
Grotesques
to be written
Karachi
to be written
Liber Sanguisugarum
to be written
Mal'akh
to be written
The Maltese Incident
to be written
The Mountains of the Moon
to be written
The Musical Offering
to be written
Napoleonic Era
to be written
The "Princess of Parallelograms" Letters
to be written
The Shelley Cabal
to be written
The Society of St George
to be written
John Hanning Speke
to be written
The Star Chamber
to be written
The Walking Dead
to be written
House Xianthellipse
to be written
Robert Scarratt
to be written
The A-Z of the War
House Strategist Entarodora
to be written
"Monsters" Coda
to be written
Xenoprediction
to be written
"You" Diversions
to be written
"Probability" Doctrine
to be written
Confusion
to be written
Utterlost
to be written
Zero Time
to be written
Gravity Spiders
to be written
Time-thickening
to be written
Apportation
Apportation is a term for the use of duplicates to disturb the timeline. A notable usage of apportation was in the kidnapping of Elisabeth Canning, in which (through the machinations of Robert Scaratt) two different versions of a chief subject in the case were seen.
Women (Dressing Up As)
to be written
Nechronomancers
to be written
HEM (Highest Entropy Matter)
to be written
Ordifica
to be written
Intercreationals
to be written
Leviathans
to be written
Quintessence
to be written
Redemption Cult
to be written
Forced Regen Missions
to be written
D-Mat
to be written
Burlesque Devices
to be written
"Killerbots" (Autonomic)
to be written
Vaccinations (Temporal)
to be written
Houses and Orders
to be written
Jungle Children
to be written
Hauserkinder
to be written
"Justine's Story"
to be written
House Arpexia
House Arpexia are the most hyper-logical of the Great Houses. They view everything through the lens of scientific thought (to the point of fundamentalism). They are inimically opposed to House Xianthellipse, though the two Houses have never actually fought. A large chunk of the Great Houses' technical developments were made by Arpexia.
Babels
Some time before the outbreak of the War, the Great Houses (possibly during the Imperator Presidency) tried to engineer the casts into a more powerful weapon. This led to the breeding-engine of (the long dead) House Catherion being looted and remade into a factory to produce the "babels". Ultimately only eight (at most) babels were created - all of which were absolutely insane. One babel managed to escape, causing mass carnage on the Homeworld.
Casts
to be written
House Catherion
to be written
House Ixion
to be written
Lethean Campaign
to be written
Order of the Weal
to be written
Chatelaine Thessalia
to be written
War Predictions
to be written
War Predictions: Chatelaine Thessalia
to be written
Zo la Domini
to be written
The History of the Homeworld
Closed Session (of the Ruling Houses)
to be written
The Closed Session from House Dvora's Account
to be written
Dronid
to be written
House Dvora
to be written
The Enemy
to be written
The Faraway Declaration
to be written
The First Message from the Enemy
to be written
The Head of the Presidency
to be written
The Homeworld
to be written
House Lineacrux
to be written
The Nine Homeworlds
to be written
Noosphere
to be written
The Presidency
to be written
Protocols of the Great Houses
to be written
Regen-Inf
to be written
The Ruling Houses
to be written
Sex
to be written
Space (Five Famous Battles)
to be written
Timeships
to be written
Laura Tobin
to be written
Academician Umbaste
to be written
The War King
to be written
The War King's Inaugural Address
to be written
Carmen Yeh
to be written
Appendix III: Carmen Yeh's "Fantastical Travels in an Infinite Universe"
to be written
Compassion
to be written
The History of Posthumanity
Earth:History
to be written
Earth Chronology (1431 to 2001 AD)
to be written
Posthumanity
to be written
Praxis
to be written
Siloportem
to be written
Time-Travel: Posthuman
to be written
War Predictions: The Rivera Manuscript
to be written
Appendix IV: Notes on the Rivera Manuscript
to be written
The Academician's Story
Academicians for Game Logic
Shortly before (specifically thirty years) before the breakout of the War, the culture of the Great Houses began to lurch forwards from its stagnant state by gaining self-awareness. This took the form of the Academicians for Game Logic - a group that rejected the view that everything is literal and instead began viewing behaviour in terms of game logic. Unfortunately, the War made this phase of deconstruction brief.
Academician Devonire
to be written
Grandfather Paradox (Representations)
to be written
The Grandfather's Arm
to be written
Kaiwar
to be written
Paradox Anxiety
to be written
The Thousand-Year Battles
to be written
Waves of the House Military
to be written
Appendix I: The Beginning of the War (A Chronology)
to be written
The Non-History of the Celestis
Anarchitects
The Anarachitects are a class of conceptual entity that burrow into architecture itself and warp the perception of its form - creating endless hallways, making bridges disappear, and other equally horrifying effects. When Anarchitects were unleashed onto posthumanity, they were at first thought to be a nanotechnological force rather than a conceptual force.
Chaotic Limiter
to be written
Conceptual Entities
to be written
Fluxes
to be written
Gargoyles
to be written
Meme
to be written
Mictlan
to be written
Order of the Dragon
to be written
The Ottoman Purges
to be written
Sacrifice
to be written
Shifts
to be written
The Shift's Story
Beshielach
The Beshielach are a race engineered by the Great Houses into a weapon. This (somehow) went wrong, and the Beshielach became diplomats - helping with negotiations with forces in the Greater Autrobulan Cluster before being caught in an explosion and (mostly) caught into the gravity well of a brown dwarf.
This entry is the first (by spelling) appearance of the Shift, who interrupts the entry on the Beshielach due to how (in their opinion) boring it is.
Dating War Era Events (Difficulties)
to be written
The Greater Autrobulan Franchise
to be written
The Lords Celestial
to be written
Memeovore
to be written
Planetesimals
to be written
Personality Reboots
to be written
Worldofme
to be written
The City of the Saved
City of the Saved
to be written
The Timebeast Assault
to be written
Former Citizen Verrifant
to be written
House Mirraflex
to be written
Lady Armourer Mantissa
to be written
Het Linc
to be written
Secret Architects (of the City of the Saved)
to be written
Uptime Gate
to be written
Amanda Legend Lefcourt
to be written
Gargil Krymtorpor
to be written
Ghetto of the Damned
to be written
Lord Foaming Sky
to be written
Order of the Iron Soul
to be written
Cousin Pinocchio
to be written
The Rump Parliament
to be written
Father Timon
to be written
House Halfling
to be written
The Piltdown Mob
to be written
Sons of Tepes
to be written
The Impaler's Story
Tirgoviste
to be written
Ulterior Worlds
to be written
Vlad III of Wallachia
to be written
Wallachia
to be written
Djinn
to be written
The Edimmu
to be written
Gragov
to be written
Lord Halved Birth
to be written
Investigators
to be written
Investigator Thirty-One
to be written
Mark of Indenture
to be written
The Poenari Relic
to be written
Grigori Efimovitch Rasputin
to be written
The Thirteen-Day Republic
Cousin-Thrice-Removed Anastasia
Originally one of the doomed Romanov family, Anastasia was saved from her death by Faction Paradox and recruited into her ranks. She befriended "Father Dyavol" and began to form a "career" within the Faction. This "career" crumbled with her formation of the Thirteen-Day Republic. As the Republic ran towards its catastrophic end, Anastasia began showing irrational and paranoid behaviours. After the fall of the Republic, Anastasia was forced to go through three separate deaths in different points in human history.
The Cult of Celebrity Death
to be written
Father-Twice-Removed Dyavol
to be written
The House of Lords
to be written
The Malachite Room
to be written
Cousin-Once-Removed Nadim
to be written
Cousin Octavia
to be written
The Red Burial
to be written
Removal of Members
to be written
The Thirteen-Day Republic
to be written
Battle of Valentine's Day
to be written
The Winter Palace
to be written
Witch-blood
to be written
Labyrinths
to be written
Biodata
Biodata is a record of how an individual consciousness fits into history - effectively serving as "time DNA" (in the words of R.B. Nevitz). Though Nevitz viewed it as nigh-impossible that biodata could be read, the Great Houses (largely due to how advanced their technology is) are able to read biodata (though they have a harder time reading future biodata than past biodata). Nevitz also postulated that only biological entities had biodata, but this is provably wrong.
The Diaspora
to be written
Eremites
to be written
Faction Precursors
to be written
Mrs. Foyle
to be written
The House of the Rising Sun
to be written
Labyrinths
to be written
The Remonstration Bureau
to be written
Voodoo Charter
to be written
The Venue Accords
to be written
Weaponstores (Remote)
to be written
The Ghost Dance
A'daltem Ano'nde
The rifle used by the Kiowa prophet Pai'nyga in his battles against the American settlers. It was stolen from a sergeant named James Rufus Daly by Pai'nyga after a dreamlike vision of a dakina (though inthe skirmish with Daly, Pai'nyga lost one of his fingers). Pai'nyga began to see himself as an extension of the rifle. Supposedly a few decades (specifically in 1890) after Pai'nyga's battles with the settlers, the "shadow-spirit" of the rifle fled - leading to its cartouche being erased.
Cousin Belial
to be written
Catch-the-Bear's War Bonnet
to be written
Ghost Shirts
to be written
North American Warrior Tribes
to be written
Nunaha'wu
to be written
Open Doors
to be written
Pai'ngya
to be written
Peyote Dream Runners
to be written
Sand and Snow Ammunition
to be written
Tenskwatawa
to be written
Appendix II: From the North American Journals of Cousin Belial
to be written
The History of the Remote
Anchormen
Anchormen are a contemporary faction to the peyote dream runners - serving as a sort of anchor to the real world. Though the anchormen greatly helped the dream runners during the turbulent history they lived in, the anchormen began to show flaws as time went on - completely losing any focus or perspective on the world that they were supposed to anchor the dream runners to. By the 1900s, the anchormen were functionally extinct though the Remote used some form of anchormen.
The Broken Remote
to be written
Fallahal
to be written
The Jallama Reed Transmissions
to be written
The New Young Gods
to be written
Remembrance Tanks
to be written
Shadow-Masks
to be written
Simia-KK98
to be written
The Viewers and Listeners Protocols
to be written
Wovoka
to be written
Faction Hollywood
to be written
Michael Brookhaven
to be written
Brookhaven: A Filmography
to be written
Brookhaven's Follies
to be written
Christopher Rodonanté Cwej
to be written
Cwejen
to be written
Faction Hollywood
to be written
The Fat
to be written
The Gauntlet
to be written
GCI Processor
to be written
Hollow Spectaculars
to be written
Brookhaven's Ghost Kingdom: The Six Central Characters
to be written
The Hollywood Bowl Shooting
to be written
The House of the Seven Gables
to be written
The Mount Usu Duel
to be written
"The Mystery of Edwin Drood"
to be written
The North Los Angeles Cabal
to be written
Order of the White Peacock
to be written
Production Hell
to be written
"Through the Eye of Eternity"
to be written
Chad Vandemeer
to be written
The End
"Briefings"
to be written
Humanity
to be written
Nanotechnology
to be written
Ronald Bela Nevitz
to be written
Time-Travel: Biodata Principle
to be written
The Younger World Story
to be written
Coda
House Lolita
to be written
House Tracolix
to be written
Parablox
to be written
Characters
- Beast of the Hours
- Belial
- Compassion
- Devonire
- Eliza
- Formosii
- George II
- Godfather-lieutenant
- Grandfather Paradox
- The Imperator
- Yssgaroth at the Caldera
- Godfather Morlock
- President of Dronid
- Lord Smoking Mirror
- Sophocles
- James Thomson III
- Lords Twin Leopard
- The War King
- Yssgaroth
Mentioned only
Worldbuilding
- Loa within Earth voodoo are a type of spirit, but neither ghst nor god, being "a presence which walks on a plane alongside humankind rather than above it, which can be invoked, called upon or even invited to occupy the body of the summoner".
- Het Linc is a polymath.
- The Malachite Room is part of the Winter Palace.
- Faction Paradox uses Sabakash bones for armour.
- 104-forms are timeships.
- The Hall of Faces is in House Catherion's chapterhouse.
- Sand and snow ammunition was used by some Native American tribes.
- The Yowie is a cryptid. The Mokele-mbembe was thought to be one.
Notes
- While editing The Book of the War, Lawrence Miles described it as "a continuity in a book, it's an encyclopaedia to the War Era universe. It's got a structure rather than a plot, the way history's got a structure or a Bible's got a structure. Some parts of the universe are cross-referenced with other parts, and it all comes together to make up this great big … vision."[3]
- Miles carefully structured the book so it could also be understood if the entries were read in alphabetical order: at one point, he specifically requested that Jonathan Dennis rename a character to move the respective entry in the book.[4] The entries in several sections of the Design Specs reading order were notably given in alphabetical order.[2]
- With the inclusion of the prior and subsequent entries, "Robert Scarratt" and "Jungle Children", the A-Z of the War section does indeed includes one entry for every letter of the alphabet. In the original "Design Spec" document, the nonexistent entry "Scarratt's Group" was included in this section as an intentional error.
- Miles was selective regarding which concepts were borrowed from the Doctor Who universe, particularly with regards to alien species. For instance, he had permission from the Robert Holmes estate to use the Sontarans, who had previously appeared in his The Faction Paradox Protocols audio stories, but he decided they weren't necessary.[5] In contrast, he obtained permission from Neil Penswick to use the Yssgaroth from The Pit, because, even though the concept was generic, Miles described "Yssgaroth" as "the best name I've ever heard".[6]
- Besides its continuity connections to the Doctor Who universe, The Book of the War also included references to many stories from other genres and fictional universes:
- The term "Violent Unknown Event" was borrowed from Peter Greenaway's 1980 film The Falls.
- The self-mutilating Eremites and their Labyrinth mirror the Cenobites from Clive Barker's Hellraiser franchise. Other references to Barker's works include the names of the Order of the Weal and the Immaculata.
- The effects of praxis reference melange from the classic science fiction novel Dune, as does the story of Robert Scarratt's defusal of a native uprising on House Xianthellipse's praxis-supplying planet.
- Investigator Eighteen's sham trials of new Celestis agents references the role of "Conductor 71" in the classic film A Matter of Life and Death.
- Several elements are borrowed in homage to The Big Time. These parallels were further developed in the Faction Paradox anthology The Book of the Enemy.
- The 1805 novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is mentioned as a legitimate account of a praxis fugue.
- The unreachability of the Mornington Crescent tube station in the Stacks pays homage to the 1970s comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, which originated the game Mornington Crescent.
- Lawrence Miles briefly considered releasing an expanded version of The Book of the War on CD-ROM.[7] Though Mad Norwegian Press' other Faction Paradox books would be later be released as ebooks, CEO Lars Pearson said that the number of permissions that would be needed from the contributors made it untenable.[5]
- The entry for the City of the Saved quotes a traveller's lyrical description of the City as "an urban sprawl the size of a spiral galaxy… a fabulous shimmering lightscape nonillions of miles across". This traveller was intended to be Iris Wildthyme.[8]
- The Book of the War won three awards from the Jade Pagoda mailing list in 2002: Best Anthology; Best Short Story, for the Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom-related entries; and, for its use of Faction Paradox, Best Returning Character or Concept.[9]
Who wrote what?
Simon Bucher-Jones, Daniel O'Mahony, Ian McIntire, Mags L. Halliday, Helen Fayle, Philip Purser-Hallard, Kelly Hale, Jonathan Dennis, Mark Clapham, and Lars Pearson[1] all contributed material to the book. Each contributors mostly worked on their stories independently, only discovering Lawrence Miles's added intersections with other stories once the book was released. It was deliberately kept unclear as to which authors contributed which entries, but later releases provided some clues.
- As editor, Lawrence Miles was responsible not only for writing many entries but also for rewriting and interweaving the other writers' contributions. The "Faction Paradox Family" section was credited to him in the book's notes, and it had been previously released on the Faction Paradox website.[10]
- Simon Bucher-Jones contributed slightly more than any other writer besides Lawrence Miles. The final edition of The Book of the War included at least one entry by Bucher-Jones for every letter of the alphabet, including "Lords Celestial", which was interrupted by the Shift.[11] Perhaps relatedly, the "Design Specs for Advanced Users" included a "The A-Z of the War" section which featured entries for many concepts also explored in Bucher-Jones' novels The Taking of Planet 5 and The Brakespeare Voyage, such as the Leviathans and Robert Scarratt, who was credited to Bucher-Jones in the acknowledgments of Weapons Grade Snake Oil. The Order of the White Peacock also appeared in The Book of the Enemy and early drafts of The Brakespeare Voyage.[12]
- Daniel O'Mahony came narrowly in third place for words contributed to the book. He wrote far more for The Book of the War than ended up in the final draft, and Bucher-Jones only overtook him in the final edit.[13] He drew heavily from his rejected BBC Books novel proposals, saying "the entire plot of one outline is embedded in there somewhere, while a lot of the background for another became a major part of the Faction universe."[14] The planet Lethe, mentioned in the entry for the Lethean Campaign, previously appeared in O'Mahony's Doctor Who short story The Parliament of Rats, itself a scene from a BBC Books novel proposal.[15] He stated that he had no involvement in Michael Brookhaven's filmography.[16] He would later use babels, Thessalia, and the Order of the Weal in his novel Newtons Sleep, which acknowledged Bucher-Jones, Hale, Halliday, and Purser-Hallard for permission to allude to their work for the series.
- Ian McIntire introduced Carmen Yeh in his unlicensed short story Schrödinger's Botanist for the 1998 charity anthology Perfect Timing. The related entries were co-written with Mad Norwegian Press CEO Lars Pearson.[1] He also contributed to the entry for the War King, including the detail of the unfolded hypercube on his desk, which was intended as a link to one of his other, ultimately-rejected entries.[17]
- Mags L. Halliday wrote about Anastasia and the Thirteen-Day Republic.[18] She later used Cousin Octavia in Warring States.
- Helen Fayle wrote the material about the Mal'akh,[19] the Shelley Cabal,[20][21] and the Star Chamber.[22] Her fan award-winning The Book of Taliesin fanfiction series was inspired by Alien Bodies[23] and depicted Simon Bucher-Jones' "version of what the 'Enemy' might have been".[24]
- Philip Purser-Hallard wrote the articles concerning the City of the Saved,[25] which he had originally developed for his ultimately-unproduced Iris Wildthyme novel Iris Wildthyme in the City of the Saved.[8] He later revisited the City in his novel Of the City of the Saved… and in Obverse Books' City of the Saved anthology series. He also wrote the entry for House Mirraflex,[26] although Miles thoroughly rewrote it in editing. Purser-Hallard commented that he had not written the articles on Wallachia, Michael Brookhaven, Grigori Rasputin, or the Spiral Politic.[25]
- Kelly Hale, who herself is part Native American, wrote the entries concerning Cousin Belial and the Faction's Remote experiments on Native American warrior tribes. She later returned to Native America and Wounded Knee in Project Thunderbird.
- Jonathan Dennis, who had previously written the story The Hollywood Life for the 1999 charity anthology Perfect Timing 2, created Faction Hollywood for The Book of the War. However, those entries also included major contributions from at least three other writers,[1] including Lawrence Miles[27] and Simon Bucher-Jones.[28] Dennis also contributed one other full plotline and several miscellaneous entries. He later revisited Faction Hollywood in his stories Remake/Remodel and Hyponormalisation, and he co-write The Brakespeare Voyage with Bucher-Jones.
- Mark Clapham and Bucher-Jones had previously explored the Celestis in their cowritten Eighth Doctor novel The Taking of Planet 5.
Unincluded entries
The book credits Lance Parkin, David A. McIntee, and Eddie Robson as writers who "wanted to play but whose material didn't quite fit anywhere".
- Parkin's contribution included an entry about his character Mister Saldaamir, who had previously briefly appeared in his novels Beige Planet Mars, The Infinity Doctors, and Father Time. Although it was excluded by Miles because "it wasn't very good",[29] it was later published in the 2003 fanzine Myth Makers 13[30] and in 2021 as a standalone short story. It mentioned Last Contact, a concept mentioned in several of Parkin's stories connected to the War, including several charity anthology short stories, the unproduced novel pitch Enemy of the Daleks, and his book The Gallifrey Chronicles.
- McIntee spoke with Lars Pearson about contributing but never actually submitted any material.[31]
- Robson's five submitted entries were published online by Niki Haringsma in 2017; they told a story about Faction Paradox's Father Katzmary, his "Minimediras Project", and his daughter Tanya Glassman. They also further explored the concept of the Nine Gallifreys and the character of Mother Festen.[32] Robson would later reuse some elements of these ideas in his Bernice Summerfield audios Beyond the Sea and Resurrecting the Past, both of which involved the planet Maximediras.
Additionally, Simon Bucher-Jones wrote two extra entries, "Protective Neotony" and "Instant Animals", for the proposed CD-ROM expansion of the book; after the cancellation of that project, he published the entries on his blog.[7] Bucher-Jones returned to the concepts from "Protective Neotony" in his 2018 Faction Paradox short story The Short Briefing Sergeant's Tale as the "Hausanthropic equations".
Continuity
- A broken generation of renegades was produced some time before the War, attributed to "impurities" in the breeding engines. One of its members, the founder of Faction Paradox, was a member of an old bloodline that was widely considered "eccentric" even before his emergence. This narrative is carried over from PROSE: Crimes Against History [+]Loading...["Crimes Against History (short story)"], Lawrence Miles's earlier attempt at a history of the War, and it continues its expansion on the themes and plot points of PROSE: Lungbarrow [+]Loading...["Lungbarrow (novel)"] whose titular House Lungbarrow is the eccentric bloodline in question, as per PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet [+]Loading...["Christmas on a Rational Planet (novel)"]'s seminal reference to Grandfather Paradox as "the voodoo priest of House Lungbarrow".
- Shortly before the War, failed invasions of the Homeworld by members of the lesser species showed that the ceremonial constabularies were useless against any real threats. Such invasions were seen in TV: The Invasion of Time [+]Loading...["The Invasion of Time (TV story)"] and AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element [+]Loading...["The Apocalypse Element (audio story)"]; in PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"], Kellen referred to the latter's "Dalek incident" as one of the early signs that things had been "changing" on Gallifrey in the lead-up to the War.
- Forced-matter shells were created around node points in the meta-structure of time that could serve as portals into the Spiral Yssgaroth. This idea was first displayed during a partially-unreliable flashback to the Dark Times shown to Sam Jones by Faction Paradox in PROSE: Interference [+]Loading...["Interference (novel)"].
- It is claimed that prior to the anchoring of the thread, "early deep-time explorations performed by the Houses' pioneers had shown that there were things at work in the formative future, things which simply couldn't be classified or even monitored by the Houses' own technology". In PROSE: Cold Fusion [+]Loading...["Cold Fusion (novel)"], the Doctor described ancient Gallifreyan Patience's husband as "a pioneer and leader among [the Doctor's] people, one of the first Gallifreyans to enter the Time Vortex after it was discovered", who "led an expedition into deep time", returning with "travellers' tales of monsters and lost civilisations". This itself built on the [[First Doctor] claiming in similar terms to have once been a "pioneer" among "[his] own people", a long time prior to his involvement in the Thal-Dalek battle, in TV: The Daleks [+]Loading...["The Daleks (TV story)"].
- The entry on the anchoring of the thread acknowledges that "without doubt", it involved an actual "ceremony, (…) one great symbolic moment when the mechanisms locked into place and all the fragments of history were connected", with "elite representatives" gathered in the centre of the machine-heart. COMIC: The Final Chapter [+]Loading...["The Final Chapter (comic story)"] depicted such an event, with Rassilon ceremonially activating the Eye of Harmony using the Great Key of Rassilon as a small grouping of other early Time Lords stood in line around him.
- Multiple Homeworlds were constructed during the War, an idea established in PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"] and also featured in subsequent BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novels PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5 [+]Loading...["The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)"] and PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon [+]Loading...["The Shadows of Avalon (novel)"])
- Connected to the caldera is a well-defended "null-zone" filled with machinery for drawing out data from across time and space. Because it is also the only place where timeships can be constructed, this area is often referred to as a "kind of 'womb'". This is evidently the Matrix as first seen in TV: The Deadly Assassin [+]Loading...["The Deadly Assassin (TV story)"], often thought of as a purely virtual reality but shown in TV: The Ultimate Foe [+]Loading...["The Ultimate Foe (TV story)"] as a space that could genuinely be physically entered.
- The Shift was a liquid life-form before it was transformed into a shift; it then received the Mark of Indenture and was enslaved to the Celestis. This identifies it as the shift previously seen in PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"].
- An interventionist member of the Great Houses was believed to have died as the fighting began on Dronid. This is the Doctor whose remains drive the plot of PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"].
- Homeworld weapons like babels and casts were used on the planet Lethe, which was also seen in PROSE: The Parliament of Rats [+]Loading...["The Parliament of Rats (short story)"].
- Dronid was the chosen homeworld of the renegade Presidency, a plot point building on a minor name-drop in TV: Shada [+]Loading...["Shada (TV story)"] which had already been expounded upon in PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"].
- The tale of the Imperator Presidency and subsequent crisis is highly reminiscent of the history of Morbius as originally given in TV: The Brain of Morbius [+]Loading...["The Brain of Morbius (TV story)"]; Morbius in PROSE: Warmonger [+]Loading...["Warmonger (novel)"] was shown to also go by "the General", a rank with which the Latin "imperator" is synonymous, despite its greater resemblance to the modern "emperor".
- Chris Cwej was recruited as an agent of the Great Houses and granted the power of regeneration, as established in PROSE: Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"].
- A Homeworld colony was located on Simia KK98, as previously established in PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"] and Dead Romance [+]Loading...["Dead Romance (novel)"].
- The history of the Eremites occurs in the context of groups of Gallifreyans with religious leanings who left Gallifrey during or following Rassilon's rise to power. This mirrors the history of the Sisterhood of Karn established in the Virgin New Adventures starting in PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible [+]Loading...["Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible (novel)"], as well as the references to I.M. Foreman's original order being dissolved in PROSE: Interference - Book Two [+]Loading...["Interference - Book Two (novel)"].
- The Faction Paradox created the Remote on Ordifica. They reproduce through Remembrance Tanks. These elements were prominently seen in PROSE: Interference - Book One [+]Loading...["Interference - Book One (novel)"].
- Grandfather Paradox was imprisoned in the Great Houses' prison, as established in PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet [+]Loading...["Christmas on a Rational Planet (novel)"] and Interference - Book One [+]Loading...["Interference - Book One (novel)"].
- House Mirraflex would later be mentioned as an illustrious Great House in AUDIO: The Conscript [+]Loading...["The Conscript (audio story)"].
- Investigator One was the Celestis' head field agent. He also appeared in PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5 [+]Loading...["The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)"].
- The Homeworld was ruled by six ruling Houses. These evidently correspond to the six Chapters, a point of worldbuilding first seen in TV: The Deadly Assassin [+]Loading...["The Deadly Assassin (TV story)"] and elaborated upon in PROSE: The Ancestor Cell [+]Loading...["The Ancestor Cell (novel)"].
- Compassion was the first and only 102-form timeship. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon [+]Loading...["The Shadows of Avalon (novel)"].
- The Homeworld is ruled by Great Houses, a terminology first applied to the Time Lords' bloodline in PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible [+]Loading...["Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible (novel)"], with antecedents going all the way back to the original Dr. Who memo where the Doctor and Susan were said to hail from "the House of Dooclare".
- House Lolita is an up-and-coming force in the War. Lolita's pivotal role in the War was first hinted at in PROSE: Toy Story [+]Loading...["Toy Story (short story)"], and the Faction Paradox audios would go on to explore the ins and outs of her establishing her descendance as a proper Great House starting in AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire [+]Loading...["The Eleven Day Empire (audio story)"].
- The Babewyns from PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street [+]Loading...["The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel)"] are featured, and again said to be connected to humanity's noosphere.
- The frontier in time exists beyond the edge of the Great Houses' noosphere in the posthuman era. This references lore from TV: Frontios [+]Loading...["Frontios (TV story)"], elaborated upon in its novelisation PROSE: Frontios [+]Loading...["Frontios (novelisation)"] and later echoed on television in TV: Utopia [+]Loading...["Utopia (TV story)"], which would establish that the War Master had survived the Time War by going further in time than the Time Lords ever did, and hiding out on a planet populated by the last pocket of human-descendants.
- An Arcadian faction of self-named "guardians" was mainly composed of survivors from Earth who established a new home on the nearest Earth-like world. This is a reference to the events of TV: The Ark [+]Loading...["The Ark (TV story)"].
- A leader of the Homeworld during the War uses the title War King; this mirrors War Queen Romana as seen in PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon [+]Loading...["The Shadows of Avalon (novel)"].
- The Star Chamber ran secret operations in Great Britain and around the world, as also discussed in PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street [+]Loading...["The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel)"].
- The House of Dvora would later be mentioned as one of Gallifrey's Great Houses in AUDIO: Panacea [+]Loading...["Panacea (audio story)"], confirming the relationship between the bloodline and the "dvora" syllable in Romanadvoratrelundar's name. Dvora is said to be the "House of the Devouring Hounds", putting a new spin on the Doctor referring to Morbius and the Master as "mad dogs" in TV: The Deadly Assassin [+]Loading...["The Deadly Assassin (TV story)"] and PROSE: Warmonger [+]Loading...["Warmonger (novel)"].
- The Yssgaroth fought a war with the Great Houses at the beginning of history. This was first hinted at in TV: State of Decay [+]Loading...["State of Decay (TV story)"] and elaborated upon in PROSE: The Pit [+]Loading...["The Pit (novel)"], which established the Yssgaroth as the true eldritch power behind the humanoid Great Vampires.
- Stendec wanted to put a menagerie in the Eleven-Day Empire's version of the building on the Strand which housed a zoo in the 18th century and famously had an elephant winched to one of its higher stories. These things were also referenced in PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street [+]Loading...["The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel)"].
External links
- Official The Book of the War page at Mad Norwegian Press
- The Book of the War at the Faction Paradox wiki
- The Book of the War at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lars Pearson (22 May 2003). Re: BotW Constructing Themes Question. The Faction Paradox Community.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Design Specs for Advanced Users. Archived from the original on 17 August 2003.
- ↑ Outpost Gallifrey Interview
- ↑ Re: JP The Book of War
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Re: Faction Paradox (Non-BBC) - Your Favourites
- ↑ Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Book Of The War unused material
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Iris Wildthyme in the City of the Saved
- ↑ Jade Pagoda awards (2008). Archived from the original on 22 September 2008.
- ↑ The Faction Paradox Family
- ↑ Ask the Author SBJ
- ↑ Shard Apocrypha - Brakespeare Initialisation
- ↑ Pantechnicon Issue Eight
- ↑ Author! Author! DOM
- ↑ O'Mahony Gallifrey One Interview
- ↑ Brookhaven: A Filmography
- ↑ A Facebook post by Ian McIntire
- ↑ BBC Online Interview
- ↑ Helen Fayle on the Mal'akh
- ↑ Helen Fayle on Shelley and Lamia
- ↑ Helen Fayle on Keats and Shelley
- ↑ Helen Fayle on the Star Chamber
- ↑ Helen Fayle at FanFiction.Net via the Wayback Machine
- ↑ The Book of Taliesin: Stories
- ↑ 25.0 25.1 "So, Who Wrote What?"
- ↑ purserhallard on Twitter
- ↑ Lawrence Miles on Language, Literature and Lying to the Audience
- ↑ Re:"Through The Eye of Eternity" modest cough
- ↑ Lawrence Miles on Twitter
- ↑ Myth Makers Past Issues
- ↑ Rejected Book of the War entries
- ↑ Eddie Robson's previously unpublished entries
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