"And next year.. Queen Mab.."

Man this took a long time. My earliest development notes date back to July 2020. This was originally meant to be an adventure.

The idea came in at almost the same time that the Covid 19 Pandemic began.

2020- Covid and Genesis

The earliest file I have is “Queen Mab Base File 15072020”

I used to live in Birkenhead and take the train into Liverpool to work in the Library there. Slowly I began to notice less and less people working in the Library, and odd people wearing masks on the train. Eventually I was the only one left, masked up, working alone on an empty floor, then the library closed, then my gym closed, then oh boy my life got a lot worse.

Phobos

Actually, the ‘real’ earliest file I have on Queen Mab is from a project I conceived of around March 2020 called ‘Phobos’. One element behind this was doing a different or new version of ‘Maze of the Blue Medusa’. I only have two files left relating to this and one of them is just a blank Notepad document called ‘THE PHOBOS’. Here are the entire contents of the other file, and the total development done on that idea;

“A space ship

Inderdimensional Fey Techno-Vessel

3 Transhumanist Techno Angel Fey chicks

From a post singularity post apocalyptic futurepast

Titan-Children, or architects

psathyrella - th Infinite

(Weird space angels)

Some new arrangement

re-write of the opening area

factions and moving parts

Where am I to get names?

Science Fictional

Poetic

Memorable

Decks of a ship?

How to Introduce Concepts

Lizardmen are Zombie Engram Humans

A cylender ship?

a spiral, like a helix of DNA?

like a curl of smoke

sections - but they intertwine

but like a ship also, a tendril of sails

>> reflection of a cosmic solar-sail vessel on a midnight sea

seen through a dimensional mirror thing

Maybe you can enter through any painting in the ship?

or through many of them

More complex desires/actions for the factions

Lizardmen

Aurum Spectre

Critics

A repository of culture

like an ark

the ark of fear

holding humanities hopes, and its end

evolved past the need for

and you enter it maybe from a fantasy setting

like its a normal ship

but then you work out - or the player works out

its a space ship

or an interdimensional thing

or the PCs would think its an Elf prison

even though its supertechnical”

What remains from that concept into the final ‘Queen Mab’ seems to be; transhumanism, fey babes in space and the idea of a space ship entered from a fantasy setting.

We cut ahead a few months. By this point I must certainly have encountered August because she is mentioned here and our first formal agreement dates from a month before this. So we must have been discussing it. Here we are definitely reading a proposal for an Adventure;

“Concept

The idea for this adventure is that, depending on how you orient the page as you read it, it is both a fantasy and a science-fiction adventure.”

HOW THIS IS MEANT TO WORK IN THE PRINTED BOOK?

When you flip the book one way - with the spine on the right, as in western books, then its a science fiction adventure.

When you turn the book upside down and read it “backwards”, like a manga, then its a fantasy adventure.

BUT - the truth is that these are the same people and places but just seen from different cultural perspectives

the portrait-images of the main characters are flipped like those of playing cards, one half facing one, direction the other facing the other direction.

The Science Fiction adventurers will see it as a dimensionally-warped ship of perverted biomechanical transhumans.

In terms of adventure design, the context of the information they can get and are given will lead them to see it as a technical and material problem, and the very nature of their inquiry and the way they seen the people in it

will make the *mission* darker and more dangerous for them. Their technical abilities and the power of destruction and opposition that their guns etc give them means they are more likely to start conflicts.

BUT

If PCs enter this realm from a Fantasy Land, they will see it as a strange Eld Palace (Spenserian & Shakesperian elves rather than Tolkien) and will react to the beings there very much as if they were elves. They will (probably) not believe they have much of a chance of direct opposition so will fall back on the traditional weapons of the weak: courtesy, deceit, flattery, cunning and thinking ahead.

AND - most importantly, they will treat the beings in The Queen Mab *the way they wish & expect to be treated*.

So for fantasy characters it will be more of a dangerous social/investigation adventure, whereas for SCi Fi characters it might become more of a ‘run and gun’ shooty and/or running-away horror adventure. Either Alien, or Aliens, depending on how competent your PCs are

Wonder, or Horror. (Or both).

Format Of This Product?

I’m basing it roughly on Sean McCoys ‘Mothership’ and associated adventures. So I would say;

Size - US half-letter size, or A5.

Pages – estimate 42 pages, say 21 spreads inside.

Stapled booklet on decent quality paper.

Should be relatively easy to print and simple to send about.

‘Mothership’ is very dense and really a masterwork of layout. I doubt I can match that density but hopefully I can get close.

Aesthetic Concepts

My initial Aesthetic prompts are Alcopopstars “Ship of Theseus” and “Chernobyl Fairy Pool”.

So based on that - everyone is blue and female and there is lots of biomechanical porn/horror/beauty.

Which I am cool with - actually I am not cool with it - I really really like it and the strangeness, intensity and beauty of those images was a prime driver behind the concept.

HOWEVER - I am open to alternative approaches and the aesthetic is far from set atm.

Shelly

Another aspect of this ‘design doc’ is the huge number of quotes from Shelly’s Queen Mab;

“Unalterable will, quenchless desire

Of universal happiness, the heart

That beats with it in unison, the brain,

Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change

Reasons rich stores for its eternal weal.”

Which I must have read about this time. Shelly’s Mab is an extremely, almost hyper-progressive poem about human development, and while relatively little of the scenes and figures end up in the final ‘QMP’, this verse of helter-skelter revolutionary human potentiality does seem to affect the soul and background of what becomes a somewhat nightmarish Post-Human ‘Paradise’

“The restless wheels of being on their way,

Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,

Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:”

“Sean McCoy Built this in a cave with a box of scraps”

Thusly, work begins! A SIMPLE (directionally flipped duo-adventure) SHOT (42 pages and 21 spreads!) product. Surely, this won’t take long!

“Logistically, how does this work? in terms of timeframe and revenue split?”

Timeframe - this is the hardest one to answer. The longest I’ve ever had, a huge project that got delayed a lot, was about 5 years.

For this I would guess at about a year, the majority of which for you would be waiting around while I did stuff.

Yes…. about a year

By the time we get to the end of 2020 the basic idea of what this place is going to be, has become a lot more clear, the High Ladies exist, and their courts are set; The Queen of Air and Darkness in Autumns Halls, the Pythian Three in the Court of Dreams, Elpozoi in her Grove of Joy, Nights Iron Chariot, the Parliament of Beasts (largely cut from the final text), the Nome Queen in the Symphony of Forms, Her Grace of Wyrms in the Wyrms Roost, ‘The Halls of Melinoe’ (a little different now), and Matterjack and Antijack.

And we have a little bit of (very sketchy, I hope August won’t mind me posting this), art for ‘Queen Mab’;

2021 – Peak Patrick Hours

Its 2021 people! Good news for Patrick; DCO Remastered comes out and is very popular. This is by far and away the most popular and successful thing I have ever produced since I started self-publishing, I think it nearly matches the sales volume of the rest of my catalogue put together.

I still remember the delivery of the final book to my flat; I had it sent to what I thought would be a more accessible location and ended up having to take an Uber to some industrial estate in the middle of summer, masked up, sweating and confused, and wandering around the place looking for my boxes of books. Can’t remember if I walked back or got another cab.

While I must have been pretty busy doing other things, 2021 shows regular, at least weekly, and often daily, growth in the regular drafts of ‘Queen Mab’. There are a bunch of things here which end up ‘on the cutting room floor’ and don’t appear in the final book, for instance, the Exo-Petitioners;

Exo-Petitioners

You Hear

Barks in an unknown language. A devil-box eats this tongue and spits it out in comprehensible metal words.

“Put your hands up! Who are you? Who do you serve?”

You See

Sun-Spears blind you. Lances of burning white light, carried by hunters who seem no more than black shadows behind the sun-bright lamps.

An older, calmer voice calls out, ordering the hunters, who drop the lances of their lamps.

As sight returns you, you see a strange conclave; an old hunter and his strange followers, circled and guarded by a league of blind men. All wear masks of glass strapped around their heads, attached to tubes which lead to flasks of imprisoned beneficent wind.

These are men, of a sort. Not quite as you know them.

The Petitioners

The Old Hunter

A grave gentleman with a lined, heavy face and hair like snow. He wears something like a hunting jacket with a slim silk scarf hanging in a straight line down the centre of his pure white shirt. His clothes are finely made, though in simple cut and sombre colours which match his strong and certain manner. Clearly he is leader of this group. Though he is dressed to hunt, he carries nothing in his hands.

[For August – the references to ‘hunters clothes’ or being ‘dressed like a hunter’ are meant to be someone with a middle-ages aesthetic looking at a modern suit, for which the trousers, short jacket and tie might seem like a strange version of the clothes worn by nobles when hunting.]

The Scrivener

A young woman in a fitted hunting jacket and skirt. she carries a case at her side and holds a tablet. She treads closely upon the old hunters heels, attending to his words

replying only with agreement, and scribing in her tablet.

The Priest

An old man with a long grey beard, wearing a fine robe embroidered with strange symbols, he walks with a tall ivory staff, topped with gold. He is deeply troubled by everything he sees.

The Mage

A woman, her hair tied and face unadorned but for glass lenses upon her nose. She wears a knee-length coat of purest white over a mans grey hunting suit. She glances about herself, like a bird, talking overmuch, though largely to herself. She carries a bulky case and holds the devil box which speaks the transformed metal words.

The Warrior

A warrior in a peaked cap, his face lined and serious, his chest bestrewn with medals and ribbons of many colours. His gaze roves about, dauntless and impetuous. He has a miniature cannon at his side and he shouts orders at the blind guardians.

The Blind Guardians

Strong and vital men wearing the black glass shades of the blind. Yet they look about themselves, glancing here and there, listening to the orders of the great warrior. Their sombre hunting clothes are like that of the Old Hunter, yet not as perfectly made. They hold small cannons and sun-spears which they shine about at any noise or movement.

The Plea Of The Old Hunter

In metal words passed through his mages devil box the Hunter tells his tale;

“I rule a far land.

One fall-time, strange things came. Flyers in the sky. Beasts, Satryrs and Dancers stepped from shadows and from water, like reflections.

Our tools turned on us. Our fighters fell sick, or were lost to dreams.

They took much. Winter came. They left.

Since then, many dream without sleep. More and more each day. Soon the dreamers will outnumber those who wake.

We can find no cure.

Autumn came. The leaves turned. A white Satyr came, and said; Come, King, beg Queen Mab, and she will heal your harm.

The White Satyr showed us a door in the shadow of falling leaves.

So I have come to find this Queen Mab. To beg her to lift her curse of dreams.

We are lost here. No food and water. Please help us.”

 

2022 - ‘HA HA HA I AM A GENIUS’

Bad news everybody! Demon-Bone Sarcophagus comes out and it is not well liked to put it mildly. (It actually sells not-too terribly, about half the rate of DCO, but unfortunately I had, lets say, a LOT of confidence in this project and its collapse was demoralising.)

This far in, the art for ‘Queen Mab’ is starting to look a lot more like the final version and the file is starting look a lot like an actual book. We have tables like this;

One or two characters from which do actually show up in the final text.

By the end of the year I have… massively overwritten the idea. 2022 ends with 306 pages and nearly 79,000 words. Any idea of a ‘short adventure’ is clearly left long behind, but where am I actually going with this? While continuing to detail the people and places of ‘The Queen Mab’, I am also bringing in hyper complex concepts like the time-looped ‘Knights of Grief’, strange extra-causal ‘Messengers of Time’ and aspects of the adventure that include messages from your future selves and the idea of multiple plays as an intrinsic diegetic part of the setting.

This is all very innovative but this idea is huge, and growing ever more complex, and every form of complexity interacts with every other form, requiring more and more prodigies of explanation and contingency.

2023 – a Crowhurst Moment

Speak, False Machine comes out this year and does ok. A massive book at a high-ish price, and all little more than a testament to my own self-importance. The robots won’t be able to re-write me now!

But with Mab, clearly I have begun to recognise that I have fucked up severely. There are only eight updates for this whole year.

2024 – Wait, I Can Still Fix This

The year of Gackling Moon, another book whose publication history is… complex, and long.

With Mab, a sea-change has taken place. Clearly I have given up on writing an actual adventure module. Instead my drafts have been re-named ‘Queen Mab – a Guide’ and everything starts to be re-written in a very different manner.

“I find I must speak a little more to tell you first of the manners of the palace for its courtesies are so curious that, should I embark to tell you of this or that realm or court and you have not the way of it first, what might be held strange shall seem beyond understanding.

While it is said that the Palace is a Free Kingdom where one might rise or fall by ones own efforts, aye even beasts and the doors given voice, the dead walk and dreams made real, in truth the High Ladies rule all, and Mab rules the High Ladies.

The creatures and courtiers may be somewhat predatory, cannibalistic, homicidal and mad, but they are rarely impolite. Even the lowest; the Kroo and the Dwellers of the Crypt will make some attempt at forms of politeness. Courtesy does not preclude predation. The Palace hovers often on the edge of famine. In the Crypt one may eat freely of whomever one may take, save those blessed by Melinoe, or in a Night Market during a Saints day. In the Courts there is a different law; one should not predate, save by the will of whatever court one is in.”

This is the first existence of the voice of ‘The Scribe’; the narrator of a ‘Gackling Moon’ style Gazeteer, written in an Epistolary style, a visitor from a pseudo-medieval culture describing ‘The Queen Mab’ for… who exactly?

The first ‘Scribe’ is bodiless, nameless, even genderless, I never knew even what sex they were or what they looked like. But this will slowly change..

Around April, the drafts of ‘Queen Mab – a Guide’ transmute into ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’, and then into ‘QMP’, I am on a roll here and its during this grand re-write of 2024 that the descriptive ‘place’ sections are broken up, moved around and absorbed into particular recollections by in-world characters. The ‘Guide Book’ slowly changes into a ‘Story Book’. The ‘Scribe’ gains a gender, a form, and a strange and particular history. They even get their own drawing!

Most people who have read the final text of ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’ say something like; “It’s not bad, the first part reads kind of like a game and the end more like a novel” and I think I am ok with this. I could have re-written more, made it more and more and more like a novel, but I am fine with the presence of time and the development of the writer in a text, and I like the book the way it is, and of course, remember the “42 Pages” and “About a year”. By this point the phrase “and then Queen Mab” and “still working on Queen Mab” have bedded themselves so deep into my vocabulary that they are like automatic speech.

By August (the month) 2024, I have completed a ‘Draft Zero’ which is pretty much the text for the finished book

And in October 2024, we run a successful..

KICKSTARTER!

Yes everything is going ok and we will certainly have a finished book for you by….

Oh my god….

2025 - Did I really publish nothing this year?

Look, things just take a while.

Layout, discussions, firm and frank exchanges of views, art, more art. I know it seemed like not much was happening but in fact a fair amount was and I can prove this because we did indeed produce a finished book! It just took just over a year to get everything laid out and finished and the book actually printed.

But it does exist!

2026 – No-One Killed Me

Donald Crowhurst is a semi-famous figure in British modern mythology; an attempted amateur round-the-world solo yachtsman, his self-designed yacht started to fall apart mid-Atlantic.

In a world with global radio coverage, but without, yet, a universal Global Positioning System, the only way for the race observers to confirm the yachts locations across the globe was via self-report. Each contestant would radio in, every day, with a latitude and longitude, to tell everyone how they were doing.

As Crowhursts actual position began to fall behind the other contestants, he began, only a little at first, to bend details, to place his reported position just a little ahead of where he actually was. Then the next day, having lied a little, he lied some more, all the while desperately dealing with a leaking, floundering ship, alone in the ocean. Thinking, perhaps; “I can make it up, I can get back on track.”

Eventually he seems to have come up with a desperate concept to rescue his dream; he would float around in the Atlantic, going nowhere, living out this fantasy of a round the world race, with fake reported positions and fake events, until the actual race did finally go circumvent the earth, and returned to the Atlantic, at which point he would join in, for real, and float into port, ahead of the rest, having gone ‘round the world’.

Either he fell into the sea or took his own life. His body was never found, just the empty, leaky yacht, with no Crowhurst, but two well-kept logbooks; one showing every position of his ‘round the world race’, the other, his actual, mad empty circles in the Atlantic.

Who knows, perhaps he is still out there somewhere, living under another name. We can hope.

(Shelly, who wrote the ‘Queen Mab’ quoted above, also died mysteriously in a boat.)

What does this have to do with ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’? Absolutely nothing.

Anyway, thanks to August for not actively murdering me. The book is now done and is available for sale. I think its pretty good.