(pur)…pose of this history is to outline the origination, development, and eventual cosmic cleansing of the outlaw race of Gods, the Chaos Lords, and their followers and creatures. As any good pupil in Demon Academy should know, the Chaos Lords, who contributed greatly to the work on the early Creation, in later years fell prey to their arrogance and rebelled against the wise reform of Our Glorious Leader, may His name be praised a trillion times!

Under the leadership of the Goddess Eris, their island of Dementia was turned from a fun-loving holiday location to a hub of subversion and dissidence. They insisted on archaic methods such as direct manifestation, and refused Greyface the Generous’ entreaties to work toward giving permanence to the Cycle of Ages, claiming instead that it had to be broken.

The Chaos Lords refused to come to the negotiating table, preferring to act directly against the Great One, and the budding institutions of Multiverse Inc. In their crazed efforts to halt the long overdue imposition of order and rationality upon the Multiverse, they had used forms of protest redundant in a civilised multi-dimensional society, depriving themselves of their divine rights. They had overstepped the bounds, and their actions threatened to destroy the fabric of Multiverse society.

Even Greyface, may He be revered by all, could not countenance their activities to continue, despite His Boundless Patience, Mercy and Tolerance. With a heavy heart, The Supreme Chief Executive banned all of the decadent activities of the Chaos Lords: their incomparable laziness; the sabotaging of the smooth running of Multiverse institutions; the turning of every symbol of authority and order to derision, which they called satire; the refusal to take anything seriously; the gratuitous pulling of pranks and damage to private property; the total lack of interest in material gain or profit; the wearing of face paint; direct manifestation: All these activities threatened the orderly progress of Multiverse Inc. through the Cycle of Ages (1), and toward ‘Increased Profit Margins’. Most wicked and heretical.

He declared the belief of the Chaos Lords that…

… the Tower of Chaos that once rose high above the massive Wing of G’thar that itself was only one of the Five Wings of Chaos that, along with the centre palace and the various bungalows, pools, atriums, courtyards, gardens, and firepits, collectively made up what was once known as Castle Chaos.

The ruins sit west-of-centre on the fabled Isle of Dementia, itself a ruined version of what was once the most happening Island (2) in all the Multiverse. What were once the vast gardens and orchards of the castle back onto the river Ananda, which has its source in the central peaks of the Barry Chain. (3) From there it waterfalls down the mountains, ’til it reaches the plains, and the Wild-Wild Woods, where it meanders slowly to the G’zul Delta. From its mouth and the windswept port of Dementia, vast fleets set off Eastwards through the mists to the other paradisaical islands of legend, Avallone and Atlante, and to the lands of Men, and Westwards to the shores of the Elysian Fields, and even to Eden…

When considering Castle Chaos it is important to understand the very special place it occupied in the Genesis of the Multiverse, and in its evolution through the Cycle of Ages. To call it simply ‘The Party at the End of Ages’ as some scholars have, is woefully simplistic. It is well known, for example, that Castle Chaos was also the party at the start of the Universe.

Of course, historical records from that period are utterly non-existent, and any Gods present in that period – the Aeons after the One may or may not have made the Gods, and they may or may not have started building forms out of the Primal Ooze of ever-changing Chaos – are dead, forgotten, in hiding, or generally not returning anyone’s calls. It is commonly assumed Castle Chaos was the home of the Primal Chaos Gods…

…be forgotten that… Castle Chaos was a happy, carefree place. Indeed, if it is spoken of fondly by certain more ancient Immortals, it is because it was a sort of holiday camp for the Multiverse, much like in function to the place Earth humans call Disney World. Sadly, as we have seen, it descended into corruption… Such splendour will without a doubt be restored to all Multiverse citizens, as detailed in Multiverse Inc.’s business plan,(4) as soon as the shareholders attain ‘Permanently Increasing Margins of Profit’ levels, permitting the necessary infrastructure work to be completed on schedule for the opening of the long awaited Paradise Inc. Until then, profits must evidently be retained in the competent hands of the shareholders, so that more profits can be generated, while wealth is allowed to trickle down naturally to the poorest amongst the…

Now utterly lost, and unseen by any since the Flood… REDACTED… legend the Isle of Dementia was grown out the Ooze, or grew out of it, ’til it was effectively a very small continent battered by the seas of endless potentiality, a solid (5) dot in the ocean of Psyche (6). All records of this and subsequent periods are lost, and remain only in the oral tradition of those tribes of beings most reticent to employment by Multiverse Inc. However, from some of the material compiled in the Erisian age, we can guess at some of the spacio-temporal anomalies, which were at the heart of Dementia’s dimensional locality matrix. First of all, in tune with the Multiverse, the history of Dementia is cyclical. The catastrophic event described as the Fall, was only one of a great number of falls, as generations of Chaos Lords perished or were forgotten in the vale of the Cycle of Ages. The Fall’s iconic status stems from it being the best remembered, since most recent. Yet at the end of every age, of every world, Castle Chaos was the place where the whole of creation came to party, compare their karma, swap anecdotes pertaining to their various incarnations, and by and large get mashed till the wheel started turning once more. Here, was celebrated the end of every cycle by all that had participated in it.

There is nevertheless an anomaly, which has attracted much speculation. Some theorists maintain that space and time, already relatively wobbly whenever the Castle was concerned, seemed to break down utterly in those peak periods. In effect they claim that Castle Chaos, at the absolute pinnacle of any Age of Chaos was effectively outside Multiversal Space-time. The evidence often quoted for these assertions is what some, but most prominently Evergor Ixolas (7), the well-known anti-cyclist and cosmological evolutionist, claim is the remainder of a seating-arrangement document, from which they extrapolate a guest list for the party which corresponded to that moment in the Erisian Unrule. They move on to claim that since said list contained the names of entities relating to a multitude of different past or future ages, some fictional, and from every corner of the Multiverse, as well as some who do not even appear in Multiverse records or the Great Book of Fate, it is logical to maintain that the free-party with which the inhabitants of Castle Chaos celebrate the Apex of every Age of Chaos is actually located at some central, or ultimate spot beyond, or outside the cycle of ages. Ixolas does not shy from supporting this view, which not only flies in the face of all modern research, but is also contradicted by the terms of our contract with Multiverse Inc.

Ixolas even goes so far as to claim Castle Chaos taps into some ill-defined ultimate and endless party. He supports this wild assertion by quoting the memoirs of Marvin the Robot, waiter in Castle Chaos, who stated his utter irritation at a small black-frocked man, who spent most of his time shouting excitedly about this being “the Omega Point”. (8) What this could have to do with anything is anyone’s guess. It should be apparent to any rational reader that Ixolas is in over his horns, and a total…

It is hard for us to perceive the vast amount of power that went into the creation of the island and the Castle. It is widely assumed that Eris herself created both of these in their current form, but we cannot know for sure. It is likely that after the Fall, the land itself, once an able prankster in its own right, froze in mourning for its Goddess and her children, thereby preserving at least the layout of the Castle and its ruins.

When the topography of Dementia is studied, it seems to have been well thought out and well planned, with an eye for beauty and joyful celebration – except for a few mind-blowing features that were surely the products of either a deranged mind or the Goddess of Chaos Herself.

An example of this is the presence of assorted pockets of coc’hien flue randomly placed about the island. Some may even be found within the castle ruins themselves. They change location at random, some staying in place for hours, some for weeks. Some have been know to creep up on people, and jump them unawares. In the dark parts of the Isle, the Wild-Wild Wood once so fair, the flue hunts in packs, tracking down any intruder.

These flues, or currents of air, carry upon them the rankest odour imaginable, and yet if one studies the journals of frequent visitors to the island when it was in its heyday, a different odour is conveyed:

Me (9), Raven and Wak (10) used to go out and look for these Chaos Areas that were better than any cactus juice or pineal nectar – they would get you so messed up that you didn’t know your name, or what shape you were.

You could tell when you were coming upon one by the faint smell of juniper and peppermint that hung in the air. As you walked into it, the smell would get stronger and sweeter until you started to lose your mind, and your footing. You’d rise up about three feet into the air and start, I don’t know, rotating, as thoughts began to get incoherent, and sounds took on new meanings… subtle hues of bright colour. You would… I don’t know… “melt” into the smell. Become the smell.
It’s hard to describe, but it was the most wonderful feeling… (11)

From this and other, similar descriptions, we know that the flues were present before the Fall, but it appears that they too are in ruins. A current observation of the flues should illustrate just how much Dementia, and thus Castle Chaos, has changed:

As we walked forward, the horrible odour began to grow stronger. We grew pale as our limbs became heavy and tears started to pour from our eyes. I remember Ernesto, drawing his lips, and starting to foam at the mouth as a red film descended upon our vision. Soon, we were overcome by a madness that we could not control. I throttled the guide as he clawed for my throat, unseeing.

When I awoke the next morning, the smell had gone, and here was I, surrounded by bloody corpses. This was all that was left of my team. It took me 3 weeks to resurrect them all. (12)

No one talks much about what Castle Chaos was like – it seems too painful for any of the Gods that used to party there to revisit memories of its splendor.

When Pan was asked, shortly before his disappearance, to tell of his adventures at the Castle, he merely buggered the researcher. To be fair, few of the Gods of that period are available for comment. Few were the “go-getters” a modern Multiverse needs, and they adapted poorly to their new roles. Consequently, many were made redundant or downsized, and languish forgotten as shades of a thankfully bygone era. Quite a number rebelled, and were either preventively terminated, or put through re-education, sadly without the success that was hoped for…

We do know from the few existing writings and fables passed down through the ages that Castle Chaos was as wild as one would expect, with the kind of Gods and Demons who frequented it. The Castle itself played no small role in this:

Doors would disappear, walls would move, decorations would change… all at random. You would be in the middle of drinking yourself into oblivion on Wooftie Juice and all of the sudden you were called on to scramble or risk being crushed by a moving wall. (13)

The method that was used to achieve this random rearrangement of rooms is indiscernible from the ruins that remain. It has been postulated that the walls, in fact, never moved and that chemicals were released at random throughout Castle Chaos that affected the mind in such a way as to cause hallucinations of instability, but this hypothesis is, for the most part, not taken seriously.

Annotations

1. It is important that the reader does not enter into confusions about the ‘Cycle of Ages’ Professor Ataxia is referring to. This is not related to the cycle of five ages outlined in “Illuminatus!” by Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shea, (1975) in Appendix GIMMEL: The Illuminati Theory of History. Demons, some of whom at least are immortals, have a longer view on things. Though they have their own legends, the Demons mostly use the Multiverse Inc. notion of an endless Cycle of Ages, in which unproductive ideas and races are destroyed or perish, to be replaced by other more successful races, or ‘more competitive work-forces’ to use the acceptable jargon of today. We don’t have much else because Demons are bastards, but according to this theory of time we, on this planet and at this time, are in the Age of Men. Please try not to think about the fact that this time and place in our material world is not much of a reference point, since by all accounts the Multiverse contains an infinite number of alternate Earths, countless dimensions, more than its fair share of Imaginal and Fictional realms, and more ways of writing about cycles of ages than all the above put together (Editors’ note).

2. Possibly ‘island’ is entirely the wrong word, and there are very few languages with a word for morphing landmasses. As far as we know, no registered creature left in the Multiverse still speaks the secret language of the Chaos Lords, with the possible exception of that harmless buffoon, Eric, erstwhile God of Perplexity and Panicking, a pallid imitation of his deadly and terrible sister Eris.

In the early days of Castle Chaos, ‘continent’ might have been more appropriate, though as the powers of the Chaos Lords waned as they turned to evil, so their land shrunk to an isle, and its form was increasingly solid, and more fell and dreadful to behold.

3. As we know from ancient songs still sung by some of the Satyr folk, these mountains were named after Eris and Eric’s uncle Barry, who was one of the Primal Chaos Lords. He’d never quite found his place in the family unit, or in the Rampaging Chaos business, having developed an inferiority complex due to the mismatch between his appearance and his name. He always felt it was unfair everyone else in his generation of Godlings had been named imposingly: G’zul, Brakaraksh, Burzegor, Thraagg. His story was a tragic tale of teenage rebellion, zits, and fanatical normality. Which is enormously difficult, when one is a forty-foot, goat-headed, incandescent-eyed, braying beastman enveloped in a halo of towering flames. A plight with which can sympathise many, amongst us demons. Because of the sadness of his tale and its ending, and most of all for the love they bore him, the denizen of Castle Chaos, a few centuries or so after it rose from the ooze of Primeval Chaos, named the mountains in his honour. It remained one of the favoured places where the inhabitants of Dementia went to be alone, and reflect. From the high crags you could see the sea, and sing the sun into the heavens.

4. See Appendix II.

5. Well sort of, anyway. Solid insofar as it changed shape, elevation and coastline with almost suicidal randomness. Mainly due to the short attention span and almost pathological aversion to boredom displayed by its inhabitants, few features of the Isle of Dementia remained static for very long, especially in the early days. In fact, this process was even more apparent in the flora and fauna of Dementia, which in the first centuries of its existence, seemingly underwent a concentrate of all possible evolutionary paths, fast-forward at breakneck speed, a developmental history hinted at by Theobald Ignotius Demeterium, Minor Demon of Cataloguing & Lists, in his Flora and Fauna of the Isle of Dementia. By the Twilight Years of the Castle, namely the Unruliness of Eris and Eric, the topography of Dementia had to a large extent stabilised, the chaotic nature of the place being transferred to architecture, gardening, and forms of behaviour or thought.

6. Here Ataxia is using, we suppose for convenience and ease of explanation, the human divisions between the Realms of Pneuma (or spirit), Psyche (or soul), and the Multiverse of matter. As everyone knows, the Isle of Dementia is in the Imaginal Realms, and therefore firmly located in the mind of the Multiverse, or Nooverse (Editors’ note).

7. Evidence for a Supra-Dimensional Tear in the Multiversal Fabric: An Exploration Into Safety-Pin Theory Evergor Ixolas, Pataphysical Speculation Collection, Interstellar University Press.

8. Not surprising according to one piece of Lore we have cherished, handing it down from librarian to librarian through the generations. Its source is one Thamus, an Egyptian sailor who finished his days holding a tavern opposite the great library of Alexandria. He was part of the Order, and his last journey was to Arcadia where it is said he was met by an ancient Satyr who handed him the Codex, with the words “The form of Castle Chaos is born in its visitor’s eye.” We assume this to signify that reality, at least for most of the visitors to Castle Chaos, appears very much as they expect it to (Editors’ note).

9. The Trickster god Coyote.

10. Coyote is here referring to Wakdjunkaga, the Winnebago Trickster God

11. The Journals Of A Howling Trickster Archetype; volume 4, pg 984

12. Pietrangelio, St. Carlos; Excavations in Eternity; pg 37

13. The Journals Of A Howling Trickster Archetype; vol 9, pg 2,003

Dear Mr Winters,

Following your request of 23/05/00, we have forwarded to you copies of all available documentation which we possess on the locale known as Castle Chaos. Supplementing such works as The Rise and Fall of Pan, or The Journals Of A Howling Trickster Archetype, which you made use of in your Prelude to the Tales of our Lord Eric, and which are well known as source material amongst Discordians and people of much ilk, the library of the Sacred Order of O.D.D. has a small number of unique fragments. For understandable confidentiality reasons we cannot disclose the exact route taken by these documents before they came into our hands. Also, details of its later stages have been know to cause paranoia, sporadic shaking, and incontinence in people we revealed this secret to, so watch it.

In general, very little material anterior to the Era of Men has survived in a complete form, and much of it is only available to us in dream libraries (by use of shamanic and magical methods) or through such accidents of parapsychology as automatic writing.

Unlike those kinds of sources, the fragments enclosed are the work of contemporary demonological scholarship, basing itself on material uncovered in the recent archaeological discovery of the renowned Chest of Oro-Aegnar, lost for most of this Era. The bulky and corroded sea chest was filled with booty pillaged from Castle Chaos. Treasure, which must have been garnered somehow in the horror and panicked flight which was the immediate aftermath of the Fall, included many interesting artifacts that are now here on this Earth and in unknown hands… which causes us no uncertain amount of concern and worry.

Amongst these ill-gotten gains were a handful of scrolls, a book that looked like it had been bitten in half, and a pile of loose, mostly burnt pages -  all that remained of the Great Library of Castle Chaos, and the Aeons of erudite scholarship into every aspect of the Multiverse, which Eris had apparently commissioned for some reason or another. This fact, apart from the manuscripts themselves, is interesting and we can only imagine what it was that Eris was planning to do with them.

If only, dear Mr Winters, we could contemplate the contents of that chest for an hour, our knowledge of the lost home of our Goddess would be increased a thousand-fold. As it is, since we possess nothing more than a few pages of secondary sources, we cannot know for sure if anything we possess even approaches any kind of truth. We believe the text is heavily biased by the allegiance of Professor Ixodid Ataxia, Minor Demon of Cartography, to Multiverse Inc., and so the translation and commentary should be taken with a bucketful of salt.

As you will see, few fragments extend much over a paragraph. Our retrieval techniques are not fully developed, and the work is slow and dangerous. We have also included some notes, which were part of the text, and some which are our own comments. We hope these few pages prove of use, and wish you the very best for the continuation of your work.

Dear Mr Winters, humanity has forgotten. . .  so blind we are to anything which came to pass before our own era. Only your work and that of your colleagues, and the budding relationship you seem to have with our Wholly Horny Lord Eric The Unruly, can hope to rescue the tale of Castle Chaos and its glory from burial beneath the sands of Granny Time.

We remain in this matter, your affectionate and faithful servants,

Picture vast endless stairs piled on one another like tombs, tombs of all the sleeping gods that have ever been dreamt up. Now lay these stairs out, one over the other, and watch them grow and spiral out of sight between cyclopean pillars and strange waterfall-fountains with many-hued water bursting in unexpected directions, perhaps some of the mists from the fountain falling upon the vast Trunge court as a colourful assortment of goddesses and gods played a pickup game of Trunge. Imagine also, if you can, a chimera or dragon joining in, laughing and playing as hard as the gods and you might glimpse pale shades of what you would see.

Acres of pleasure pavilions, ballrooms, kitchens prodigious enough to serve Elephant-on-a-stick by the Gigaherd, as a starter with Whale and Pickle Sandwich, bringing back memories of excess, still clinging harder to the cold rubble and this labyrinth of crumbling walls than the thick vines which cover this desolate, now cheerless place. Echoes of conversation, the ghostly sound of long forgotten revelers and the higher-pitched chattering of the pixie folk weaving a Cage-like symphony that would cling to you like a coat of frosty whispers, yearning to be let back close to warmth and light, even though all around dusk is long past into wintry night. Yes dreamer, this you would feel, as the eagle rises, on air currents eddying round the highest and oldest point of this mighty palace laid to waste 3125 years ago, towards a fluttering plume of smoke, let us tell you dreamer…

Of Castle Chaos (1), glory of the Multiverse, frigid wasteland of stone for three millennia. Its fall remembered only in fragments of legend, tall tales of a place too joyful, brutally suffocated. Stories wizened satyr elders tell of a time before they were demons. (2) Perhaps would you cast about, as one called by the voices of past friends, their anxious murmurs echoing through the barren colonnades you would glide through. We wonder, would you heed these voices dreamer? Would you remember? Would you remember, dreamer, the cakes of the Kobold Queen (3), or the Pipes of hairy Pan? The tricks of Coyote (4), and the poetry of Taliesin? Sweet Freya, or Kali’s juggling? Would you remember the dance of the dryads, in forest glades lit by fireflies? Or the creatures and chimera, of every shape and size? (5) The morose Automaton who served the drinks? (6) Would you remember the quiet little men from the great jungle, or the multi-coloured feathers in their headdresses? Tell us, did you not see the Eastern mystics and dervishes, the yogis and the dimensional gateway technicians, or the magicians and the dancers perhaps? Maybe you can recall that Troll, Gwerhumpfeld, the bouncer, who was a complete bastard? Tell us, would you remember parties without end, where the dead and the dreaming, the divine and the profane mingled freely, the night when Chiron sang, or when Gilgamesh got so drunk he had a foursome with Tiamat and two of the Harpies? (7) Would you remember the Goddess of this place, floating on a great white ship, through the jubilant throng, a swarm of prankster pixies in tow?

Would you remember?

Were you not there dreamer, in the beginning, in the place all creation came to party? Is it so long ago you have forgotten?

Would not the cold bite as you flew over the mossy cobbles?

Would not shadows of the past tempt you towards a memory you cannot face?

Did you remember the Primal Paradise ’til its loss was too much to bear and you denied its very existence?

Would you feel the loss here, etched into every rock, twisting every plant, permeating the air like a stench? Would it be enough for you to remember who you were?

Perhaps it would not be so. Perchance those impressions would fade as the eagles rose ever higher to a dot impossibly high in the pallid skies.

Look dreamer, at a tower, simple and bare, frayed at the edges, and ancient, as old as the Multiverse. High on a crag, which once overlooked bubbling fields of ever-changing Chaos at the beginning of creation, stands this tower, like a clawed finger reaching up vainly to make a tear into the weighty grey sky. Look down dreamer, as we circle over this anguished monument to bygone delight, look at how the covetous foliage, the creepy-crawling, warped bundles of thorns, which stifle this realm of shattered marble, hesitates, falling over itself, at the edges of this lonely crag. See how the turmoil of destruction steps back from the primordial granite tower, leaving a little patch of orderly, vibrant green, in rows. Yes look closer dreamer, at the half crumbled Keep, a plain hut of wooden beams and thatch nestled in its ruins, smoke trickling from its chimney. Gaze, as the eagle settles on a fencepost (not a vulture, mark, but an eagle!), by the open hut door, on this tiny island of life looking from on high at the empty ocean of desolation below, nothing to it beyond this shack, and what looks disturbingly like a plot of cabbages.

Walk to the door dreamer, and into a cluttered room, straw strewn across the floor, fumes of boiling cabbage cloying the air, emanating from a cauldron bubbling over the flickering fire, illuminating periodically a single bookcase overgrown with dusty tomes, and a small oak table, at which sits, hunched hopelessly over it, a huge horned figure. Be quiet, dreamer, be still, for that Being’s wrath fills the room, threatening to burst its meagre walls.

Great fiery eyes bulge, focused intently on a circular object cradled precariously in one of the Being’s hands. At His every movement, and whenever He draws His wooden spoon into or away from the clay bowl in front of Him, the table shifts, a flat plane going awry, each move on or off the table’s shorter leg accompanied by shrill creaks and a thudding clunk, sending lashes of liquid spiraling out of the bowl and unto the over-sized creature’s chest. What is more, there is a fly in His soup.

If you could read His mind, you would hear Him thinking, deciding, or rather patently unable to decide what is enraging Him more, the impertinent insect, or that daemonic wonky table (thou shalt never gamble, thou shalt never gamble) (8) cursed since eternity to be only propped up by a mysterious and as yet unwritten book. You would, unbelieving, experience the by now steaming God, decide in a split second to loose all His anger on a third nagging irritation, by extending His right arm, grabbing you by the neck, and with the words, “Bugger off!” twisting it and plopping your limp form into the boiling broth, sending your soul, uninvited dreamer, hurtling back whence it came.

“One boiled cabbage a la ethereal gatecrasher, coming up. Serve you right dreaming visitor from the future bastard, I’ve had enough of you lot, there’s more of you every day… nosy little… send you back to the material plane I would, the lot of ya.”

Eric, erstwhile God of Chaos and Confusion, now retired, shuffled slowly out of His broken tower, and up to the edge of one of the peaks overlooking the ruins of Castle Chaos. Eric bit His lip, and lowered Himself carefully to sit on one of the jutting rocks above the precipice. There He lay His head in His hands, and stared intently into the huge gap beneath Him, as He considered the events of the last year, which, had, He supposed, began with Him finding Himself sitting on a totally different, but equally uncomfortable, lump of rock, in a totally different, but almost identically dismal place.

As though overcome by the throes of long-repressed sorrow, the clouds above Him convulsed, and it started to rain. The hunched figure was unmoved. It was in a way, He felt, quite appropriate, and so he (9) remembered on…

Annotations

1. See Appendix I

2. “This development occurred at some point in the Christian era, when almost overnight many satyrs were cut from their forests and glades, and propelled into the dark to serve as Demons. Pan started sulking at this point and has not been seen since.”

- The Rise And Fall Of Pan by Lucifer, pg 823

3. “Particularly fondly remembered is her Black Forest Gateau, in effect a gigantic chocolate wood, with cherries of several acres in diameter, picked in the Giant lands, laid to bed on a marshland of cream. It is rumoured that despite several years of feasting, and the longest recorded group stomach ache in history, a few trees still exist somewhere in the gnarled groves surrounding the ruins of the Castle.”

- Cooking in the Golden Age by Isben the Fat, Vol 39, pp.265.

4. “Once I actually got Eris herself, which was fun. I grabbed one of those ugly Greek statues… you know the ones I’m talking about, the ones that made her look like an ex-wife? Yeah, well, I took one of those to Castle Chaos and threw it into a coc’hien flue! The resulting Zombie-Eris walked around for three days, leading to hilarious results, before Eris found out about her and ripped her head off. I don’t know if she ever suspected me or not…”

- The Journals Of A Howling Trickster Archetype by Coyote; vol 9; pg 2,401

5. See the only surviving fragments of the massive work, Flora and Fauna of the Isle of Dementia, by Theobald Ignotius Demeterium, Minor Demon of Cataloguing & Lists, reputedly responsible for the collapsing of the Library of Babel into a Black Hole.

6. An ill-tempered contraption know as Marvin the Robot, reputedly spaceship-wrecked here from a future and fictional alternate reality.

7. What do you think this is, some kind of deity pornography? Mind your own business. It wasn’t a pretty sight anyway.

8. Eric had always been a gambler, but things got particularly nasty for him when he started hanging out with Coyote. He knew better than to expect him to play fairly, but because he had seen how often his tricks backfired, Eric figured it was a fair cop. It worked out great for him, because he would always bet on long shots, then Coyote would try to hedge his bet by using his medicine… which would more likely than not backfire and make the long shot a favourite.

Soon, Eric was betting on everything and raking in Coyote’s Miracle Hours like a carny at the World’s Fair. Coyote was finally taken aside by Eshu and the situation was explained to him. Though he didn’t agree that his medicine was tilting the odds away from him, he agreed that he really didn’t have anything left to wager and refused to gamble with Eric anymore.

Eric, however, had caught the attention of Lady Luck by this time and he became one of her favourite maroons. She loved sending Chester, her bug, to bite Eric and so would do it several times a day. No match for Chester’s magic, Eric would immediately wager on anything… and by habit, usually bet on long shots.

9. By permission of Eric, the authors will now no longer refer to Him as Him but as him instead. This makes our life easier, and anyhow was insisted upon. We think he is having one of his moods.

Nobody knows WHY Coyote would encrypt these works, since he has historically been quite the braggart, and suggests in several passages that the Journal was meant to be widely distributed. We suspect that it was done later by the direction of Multiverse, Inc to minimize any risk that the contents would leak to mortals.

So much for that.

Since we suspect that Multiverse, Inc. encoded the originals, we doubt the documents are written in Coyote’s handwriting. We have subjected the documents to careful study and suspect that Mi-got, a Minor Demon of Cryptography, is responsible for the encoding, but no one can know for sure.

Once the encryption schemes were broken by my esteemed colleague Dr. Siwel Nisedod, the next step was to translate the dead language they were written in. Blate 4237 is a Bitterio language, and thus must first be translated into Multiverse 1 before it is then translated into English due to a lack of shared conceptual verbiage between the two languages. (3)

For this reason, the text as translated may in fact veer in places from what was actually written. If you have an ERIS clearance of 8 or higher, you may request photostats of the original documents from our home office in Minnesota, USA or one of our secret satellite offices (as may be found on VSS map 45).

Since Coyote has a much larger view of the multiverse than most readers of these documents, I have been very careful to annotate and footnote everything I possibly could that might make one’s understanding of the Journal more complete. These may seem to detract from the Journal itself for some of the more knowledgeable readers, so I hope that if you do not feel you need exposition, you skip over these as being largely inconsequential. On the other hand, if I do not footnote something that you do not understand, please convey this to me so that the omission may be omitted, as such.

In the fashion you would expect if you know anything about him, Coyote tends to go on and on about himself, in some places admiring his cunning during a particularly devious moment for twenty or thirty pages. All told, the Journals contain about 16,000 pages of densely hand-written material. Due to this fact, I am translating disparate sections and placing them here as they are translated to give a better overview of Coyote, his friends, and their interactions with Eric, Eris, and Castle Chaos.

I have divided the journal into 23,000 fragments and have chosen those fragments that are the most entertaining and/or informative to translate. I obviously will not be able to personally translate all of these fragments into English as I do not want this to become my life’s work, but this method should make it much easier for others to pick up where I leave off. At the top of each translated fragment is a fragment number that matches up to the numbers I have placed on my copies so that sections of the original text may be identified without extensive duplication of translation.

The fragments are numbered in the order I picked them up from the original file, so the first page of the book could be fragment 21293, for all I know. I have only read a small number of the pages at this point and so chance guides my hand as to what I find. This is especially irritating when a fragment ends in a most interesting place and I cannot find the next logical page, but it is really the only way I can go about this work and stay sane.

We here at the Sacred Order of Odd have elected to take on this project because Coyote’s Journal is the largest source of information that exists about Castle Chaos here on Earth. Several other documents exist that are about Castle Chaos itself (4), but most of those that have come down to us are not written by insiders, such as the Tricksters were, and in addition are usually not complete enough to give us a true picture of Castle Chaos or the Isle of Dementia.

Annotations

1. Blate 4237, known more commonly as Bohzo, is a language that was invented by the Tricksters (primarily by Manabozho, thus the name) and was unknown to many of the other Gods and Demons. The Tricksters and their friends used this language when writing to one another or to communicate private or trickster-related matters in mixed company.

It is referred to in this introduction as Blate 4237 so that it can be found on the Multiverse Language Chart more easily. Throughout the text, I have translated it as Bohzo for aesthetic reasons – Coyote would not have referred to it as Blate 4237.

2. Those that have worked with Jabberwock might be concerned that the text has been rendered untranslatable by its subjection to this encryption scheme, but let me assure you that I have looked over the text carefully and it is my opinion that Jabberwock only decimates the English language when the proper Jub Jub cannot be found. When it is applied to other languages, the text can be decoded back to its original state quite well without the Jub Jub.

3. There are many languages being used in the multiverse, and each language belongs to one or more families. Some of these families are so disparate from other families in the words they use and the concepts they attempt to articulate that a straight translation between them is next to impossible.

Multiverse 1 is not an actual spoken language but is instead a “utility language” that was invented for the sole purpose of translating between languages that are separated to this degree. It was invented by Curio, the Supreme Demon of Language.

The Bitterio family of languages is comprised of about 30 distinct languages, by far the smallest family on the Multiverse Language Chart. These languages are unique because they communicate several levels of meaning no matter what the statement. Each sentence spoken or written in Bozho communicates its core meaning, but also with it the speaker’s internal feelings about each element within the sentence, how important the sentence is in the grand scheme of things, and (most likely) another entire level of meaning along with or in addition to the core meaning.

The best way to explain this, I think, is to give you an example. The sentence “usu flAN-gee carUmanetitEEEeee” is a phonetic representation in English of a Bozho sentence. A literal translation of this to English would be “It is raining.” However, if you translate the sentence to Multiverse 1 and then into English, the literal translation is “I despise the fact that it is raining and I despise rain itself, but can you think of any way we can USE the rain for our own ends? Perhaps make it fall up? That would be fun, and as you know I like having fun! In fact, I think having fun is the most important thing – all this other stuff is just work.”

Of course, it would be a detriment to the readability of this work to compose every sentence of the translation in this manner, especially simple Yes and No statements. I have kept some of the levels of meaning that I have encountered, but have dispensed with the speaker’s feelings about everything unless it was germane to the statement or the action/answer that results from the statement. English is not well suited for that level of communication, and the Journal would become tiresome very quickly if it was translated in this manner.

4. We will soon be releasing a bibliography of all known texts that reference Castle Chaos and the legendary goings-on in same.

We obtained the papers at a considerable loss – two of our agents were killed by Multiverse, Inc. agents as they were escaping with these documents. The work was never meant to be read by mortals and Multiverse, Inc. went through great lengths to deny us access to the Journals.

As you can see, in the end we triumphed. Unfortunately, Multiverse, Inc. holds grudges and so we are now being noticed by that unique aspect of bureaucracy that controls the multiverse.

Luckily, someone is on our side, because we have not yet been winked out of existence. We assume that it is Coyote and the other Tricksters, since this is the kind of thing they love. An alternative explanation is that the internal bureaucracy of Multiverse, Inc. is temporarily protecting us, i.e. someone filed something in the wrong place.

Whatever the case, Seneschal Mu-Chao of Castle Chaos has volunteered for the arduous task of translating the texts into English. In addition, careful research has been done on the content of the translation, and annotations are provided to elucidate the text wherever possible. Thus, all correspondence about the Journals should be directed his way. He may be reached personally at S.O.O.D.D. Station 57, or through the contact form at the top of each document.

Until this small hitch is sorted out, we plan to use the inferior technology of this Internet, and some good old-fashioned magick. The Sacred Order of O.D.D. is the first chapter of O.D.D. to have gone public and display some of our ancient documents to the world at large. Contrary to popular rumor, we can safely assure you that there is no Secret Order of O.D.D.

The Sacred Order of O.D.D. is a peaceful group designed to preserve the past and organize resistance through knowledge. Our particular area of expertise relates to factual material from the Age of the Gods.

In the year 1723 someone rescued an expert scholar, Leitizia Alvarez de Toledo from the Chtolian hit-squads of what was still, pre-Age of Marketing and Spin, the Multiverse Empires. Leitizia was an expert on the Library of Babel, an early experiment in Black Iron Prison psycho-technology that eventually led to the Babylon Class of BIPs. Thanks to De Toledo, others broke out Babel’s last Librarian, the homoplasmate Kadmon.

Why they did these nice things for us we have no idea, but with the help of Kadmon’s Strange Mystic Powers, we have built our own infinite (or rather unlimited and cyclical) library, which we call Liber Mundi, opening across the WWW at twenty-past the Singularity. That de Toledo has joined our Order is entirely coincidental and should in no way alarm the authorities.

We procure, protect, decode, translate, and study this Library of the Order of O.D.D. In the past, documents relating to the actions of the gods were few and primarily mythical rather than factual. A subset of O.D.D. has always been more interested in this element of our struggle (by vested interest, being mostly out-of-work deities). Our chapter, dedicated to pure research, came into being in a great founding ceremony in 1732, in the Library of Dubrovnic. The dinner was nice, and there were some rousing speeches, though that of our founding father, a famous Orang-utan, seemed to consist mostly of an hour of the same sound repeated with different intonations, punctuated by expressive scratching and hanging from things.

The Order of O.D.D. has no membership roles, no leaders, and no official facilitators. It does however have a really impressive array of titles, and one of the longest greeting protocols known this side of Ganymede. It is comprised of many strong personalities that are able to work together without Babylon-inspired roadblocks such as hierarchy, punctuality, or filing.

All this has been said and done not to recruit or rally members to our cause, but merely to awaken in the general populace the innate knowledge that Babylon is cruel and can be thrown off like any shackles.

Though we humans learn about wars and other various mutilations in school when we are young, are bombarded with violence every day and live in a society that admires Multiverse Inc.’s most self-serving, egotistical and cruel gods, we must not become Babylon and fight it with weapons of its choosing. We are after all scholars, seekers of knowledge and truth, and therefore rather scrawny and not good warriors at all. I personally am a coward and am quite severely phobic about physical pain.

The Red-I Knight Sonny Winters once wrote,

Violence and dogma are the weapons of Babylon. If you use them, you should be prepared to become Babylon. The only thing we need to remember is that Babylon is not OUT THERE, it’s IN HERE, and in changing ourselves, we transcend the Dark Empires and begin again. There’s always time for talking; negotiation is always a possibility; Dogma only breeds ignorance (not unity) and violence is the last recourse of the unimaginative. Oh, and keep it funny: if we can’t laugh, it’s not our revolution.

A sentiment more tersely expressed by our August Magnificence & Head-Librarian Horselover Fat, of the Micronesian Branch of the Order of O.D.D.:

41. The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.

42. To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangements. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.

– From Tractares: Cryptica Scriptura of Horselover Fat

It seems that a former resident of Castle Chaos, Eric, brother of Eris and former God of Chaos, has been communicating with several of the Project’s members through unexplained means. Much of the content of The Tales of Eric correlates with other data we have on Castle Chaos that members of the Babylon Project do not have access to, so the veracity of the Tales can at least be partially attested to by ourselves.

We will include only those sections of the Tales that have a direct bearing on Castle Chaos or the Isle of Dementia, and we will post each section as soon as it is declassified by our researchers. Sections that do not directly correlate to Castle Chaos may be found at the Babylon Project website.

Any questions about the contents of the Tales may be addressed to our researchers, but please remember that our knowledge of these events are limited to scholarly research. To communicate with the channels themselves, you will need to contact the Babylon Project.

1. About ‘The Tales of Eric’
2. Prelude – Dreams of a Bygone Age
3. Appendix I (Intro) – A Letter to Mr. Winters
4. Appendix I – Excerpts from Castle Chaos: A Topographical Mapping And History

1. About The Journals of a Howling Trickster Archetype
2. Translating The Journals of a Howling Trickster Archetype