A Feast For The Ghouls Preface i Introduction ii Foreword — "End Resistance" 1 End Resistance 2 Foreword — "Flight" 23 Flight 24 Foreword — "Green Eyes" 41 Green Eyes 42 Foreword — "Black Daggers" 48 Black Daggers 49 Foreword — "After the Flash and the Thunder" 55 After the Flash and the Thunder 56 Foreword — "This is Home" 72 This is Home 73 Foreword — "A Feast For The Ghouls" 87 A Feast For The Ghouls 88 Foreword — "Shards of Glass" 107 Shards of Glass 108 Foreword — "The Fart and the War of Flames" 120 The Fart and the War of Flames 121 Appendix: Chronology of the Five Years' War A1 Preface Since it is not appropriate for young scholars to boast of their accomplishments, that privilege belongs to me as one of the professors who has been mentor to Raj MajaHid since he first came to our university. While most scholars begin defining their professional interests during their university years, Raj found his direction in life much earlier. Born to a family of lawyers in Decadurinis, by the age of six he spoke fluent Northern and Southern Trade and had begun learning High Akkadian, the language of wizards, scholars and the élite classes. Encouraged by his family and surrounded by books and high culture, Raj read voluminously during his childhood. His family was able to afford excellent tutors and to send him to visit relatives in Atlan and Varin, where he was fascinated by the customs and beliefs of those lands. By the time Raj came to university he was fluent in eleven languages in both spoken and written forms. He was also learning High Cerelian, the language of the Döckálfs, which he has since mastered. He was at the time seventeen and living at the end of the era during which the Döckálfs ruled the human nations, when the study of High Cerelian by a human was punishable by death. At university Raj found the humanities and applied himself to broad studies within them. He was thus engaged when the Five Years' War began, and when Decadurinis was invaded and his peers fled to safer lands, he stayed to complete degrees in Crassian languages and cultures. For Raj, field studies are the core of the humanities. Even before the Five Years' War ended he began to plan the research which led to this work, and upon graduation he set off to seek the accounts which appear herein. He was at the time twenty-three, and for seven years he pursued his research across nearly all of Crassia's nations. Though in his introduction he only briefly mentions the difficulties he encountered, in his personal communications to me he spoke of the illnesses he suffered, the many hostile individuals he encountered and the endless frustrations of trying to find such necessities as quills, ink and paper in areas devastated by the War. He was also obliged to find work as he pursued this project, since the War nearly ruined the Decadurinian economy, and no money was available for research. The results of his labors add significantly to our understanding of both the precise events of the Five Years' War and their effects on those involved in the conflict. Raj takes us into the jungles of Balon, the deserts of Thalarar, the seas of Atlan and the mountains of the Little Nations as the War engulfs the individual narrators of these accounts and forever changes their lives. He introduces us to nine extraordinary people who faced the War with fear, hope, anger and great courage and who have chosen now to enrich our lives by recounting their experiences to us. He shows courage of his own by including accounts from a NaHrouz soldier and a Döckálf mage, members of the races which oppressed humanity for so long and caused such suffering and grief during the War. By including their narratives he brings balance to the depictions of these peoples as seen through human eyes and reveals at least a glimpse of the desires and fears which drove those races. For this even-handed approach, and for all the pains he has taken in gathering, editing and now presenting these accounts, Raj MajaHid deserves our deepest respect and gratitude. Hastaza Khalid Anwer Chair, Department of Crassian Languages and Cultural Studies Nuur University Decadurinis 20,495 S.C. Introduction A Feast for the Ghouls is a collection of nine first-hand accounts from survivors of the Five Years' War and my comments pertaining to them. The accounts describe events ranging from the most famous, such as the evacuation of Blackstone's children and the fall of that city, to personal dramas and small battles of little consequence to the larger War. They relate the experiences of narrators of many nationalities and occupations, both sexes and varying social classes and include accounts from the Döckálf and NaHrouz races, the enemies of humankind during the War. The accounts are presented in chronological order, and a chronology of the Five Years' War is included as an appendix at the end of this work for those wishing to relate the events of individual narratives to the larger framework of the War. Initially I did not plan such a broad work. During the War Dr. Anwer pointed out to me that after the hostilities ended I would have the opportunity to follow in the tradition of such great traveler-scholars as Amn-te-Kaban and Serin Ir and gather first-hand accounts from survivors. Such a project would be of great value to future scholars, and, accordingly, I decided to undertake it for my thesis. At the end of the War I set out to interview individuals who had been involved in the conflict and to record their narratives. Again and again I asked, "What happened to you during the War?" I listened to thousands of accounts ranging from terse, facts-only summaries to obvious flights of fancy. What I had envisioned as a three-year project stretched to seven years as I encountered unreliable transportation, bandits, pirates and other difficulties. By the end of my travels I had transcribed nearly four hundred accounts, totaling 58 scrolls, and from those I chose the narratives which appear herein. I have been careful to modify the accounts as little as possible, for I want to allow the narrators to speak for themselves. Where necessary I edited for flow and comprehensibility. The academic edition of this collection is much closer to the accounts as I heard them and is fully annotated. I recorded accounts in Northern Trade, as that is the language of publication, but, unfortunately, Northern Trade is poor in labels for emotions and lacks specialized terms for many mechanical, magical and military operations. In places I have been obliged to give explanations in Trade of a concept or process that a single word in another language could express. While these substitutions may shift the meanings of some words and even entire sentences, I believe that I have managed to keep the larger meanings and intents intact. The current academic fashion is to write a long introduction which details each section of the work in hand. In the case of A Feast For The Ghouls I have chosen instead to include this brief introduction to the entire work and to provide a separate foreword for each narrative. Forewords provide information on the physical setting and culture of the nation where the account takes place, before the War and after. Descriptions of the narrators are included, as are notes on any unusual circumstances or difficulties I encountered while collecting the narrative. Forewords are provided, like the footnotes which appear in places, for those readers who wish more detailed information than is given in the account itself. For simplicity’s sake I have translated all units of measure into the system used in Sergi, as that is becoming the common reckoning. All distances are in paces and metapaces (one thousand paces), and weights are in pebbles and stones (one hundred of the former equals the latter). The time system is the widely-used Atlanean calendar, which divides the year into ten months of six six-day weeks with a year's-end "short week" of 5 days. All year counts are given in the Since Creation (S.C.) calendar. Raj Fastaula MajaHid Associate Professor of Modern Crassian Studies Nuur University Decadurinis 20,495 S.C. Foreword — "End Resistance" Before the Five Years' War the desert nation of Sergi was the most isolated human nation. Its government chose not to participate in international politics and limited trade to imports of food and exports of finished metal wares. Though its professional class was swiftly advancing knowledge in the fields of mathematics, engineering and the metal arts, it was unheard of for Sergi's scholars and researchers to present their work at international conferences. Sergi's contributions to Crassia's culture and economy consisted of simple machines such as water screws and pumps and technical expertise in the building of roadways, aqueducts and bridges. Its technological weaponry was seen by other peoples as interesting but not effective against magic. The Sergian people, often called Technocrats by foreign nationals (and their nation the Technocracy), were to all appearances quiet and even meek. The War radically altered this perception. Though the precise incident which precipitated the War is still unknown to scholars, by most accounts the initial fighting between humans and Döckálfs occurred in Sergi. After that Sergi was at the heart of the War. Her cities were struck in countless Döckálf forays, and her army was challenged by armies several times its size. The technological weaponry and unconventional tactics of the Sergian military proved remarkably effective as it first withstood Döckálf assaults and then counterattacked. While its allies fell to...
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