‘Time is irreverent, just a bright gleam in the eye of the beholder.’

‘Time takes cigarette…’

From the lecture notes of Doctor John Dee.

A man of science and a magus extraordinary, and for two decades, the empire's leading mathematician and occultist.

Title: The Invention of History

As you will know, in this multiverse of ours, there are innumerable worlds, and when our life is complete, our being, some may say our very soul, transmigrates from one world to another.

Now…whether or not these alternative worlds are individual planets or merely dimensions of the Primary World…that connect, at certain points of interaction…is a matter of conjecture and indeed, a point on which many scholars have long held opposing views. I am afraid to say that many heated arguments about this subject have brought reasonable and intelligent members of academia to the point of what is commonly known as ‘fisticuffs’. And in the most extreme cases, several dear friends and colleagues have died on the field of honour, defending their chosen opinion, in a duel to the death.

Now I am sure many of you will remember: in each world, timelines run in parallel. This ensures that a certain equilibrium is maintained. However, to ensure that each of us does not relive our lives over and over in pointless replication, each life and event in one of these alternative worlds differs slightly from that of each individual’s previous existence within the Primary World. Thus, the gods allow a certain degree of latitude within each world.

Unfortunately, in the 5th World, things have started to go wrong. We must face the facts! Quite simply, the 5th World is broken.

The timelines have started to coalesce. They have begun to merge. To shift, to mix, and to flux. They twist and flow as they entwine.

It is true to say that life there is becoming very different indeed. And after all, the 5th World is far enough away from the Primary World to be different. The 5th World is a world of its own.

I know some who would say a better world…but I am really getting ahead of myself.

There is something wrong with the 5th World…and it began with the discovery of Alchemy. This, in turn, has led to what I intend to call;

‘The Invention of History.’

Mortal Critters is the story of the fifth world. Well, the introduction to it, anyway.

As alchemy seeps into the land. Witchcraft flows through courts and cloisters alike, and the Great Empire staggers under the pressure of the Hundred Years' War, a conflict so long and brutal it has begun to feel eternal. Templars march. Inquisitors burn. Kings plot. Murderers thrive.

And yet, this is not a story about the war and the collision of empires. It is a story about love, friendship, and allegiances, set during a hunt for lost treasure, and the eternal struggle for freedom, equality, and liberty.

As you know, death is not an ending. It is simply part of the voyage. When we, Mortal Critters, die, and die we do, we transmigrate, sailing onward from world to world, living again beneath different suns, and yet carrying echoes of our past lives barely remembered.

The Immortal Critters have no such escape. They are bound to a single realm forever. In compensation, the Gods have given them magic, power enough to shape history, but never enough to set them free. That is the joke that they played upon them.

Then, too, there lurk the Dark Critters.

shadow beings, glimpsed only at the edge of vision. They do not rule empires. They do not fight wars. They move unseen between all worlds. They hunger, and they feed.

They malevolently feast on human frailty.

The slow unravelling of the human mind and conscience.

As the empires rot and faith fractures, the Dark Critters grow stronger.

The story is told through multiple voices and viewpoints, many drawn from real history, their lives fractured and rewritten as they collide in the Fifth World. Saints and heretics. Knights and scholars. Rulers and outcasts. Each believes they are shaping events.

None of them realises that they are experiencing the invention of history.

But here, I bid you bide a while. And I will tell you a story: