City of Saints and Madmen

SIRIN. A writer and editor originally born near far-fabled Zamilon. He is primarily known for his series of fictions supposedly describing various aspects of Ambergris history. Infamously involved in the Citizen Fish Campaign. See also: Citizen Fish Campaign; Fungus; Shriek,Duncan; Zamilon.

SKAMOO. A proud, aloof people well-adapted to the snow of the frozen northern regions. Some historians have tried to link the Skamoo to Zamilon, claiming that the forebearers of the Skamoo built the fortress-monastery. See also: Zamilon.

SOPHIAISLAND. An island named after Manzikert I’s wife, located in the River Moth, to the north of Ambergris. Long ago ceded to Hoegbotton & Sons by Ambergris’ last Cappan, John Golinard, in exchange for much-needed monies,SophiaIsland served for many years as a base for Hoegbotton mercantile operations. However, some 50 years ago, H&S leased the eastern half of the island to Frankwrithe & Lewden, in exchange for trading rights to Morrow markets. In recent years, the island has become a battleground between H&S and F&L forces, slowing traffic north and south as both sides exact ever-more ridiculous tariffs on boats wishing to pass through. See also: Frankwrithe& Lewden.

SPACKLENEST, EDGAR. Author of the cult novel Lord Hood & the Unseen Squid. Spacklenest came from “old money” and lived in a mansion in the marshes to the west of Ambergris with his mother, grandmother, and sister. From his third-story room overlooking the Moth, he would write for hours in a black notebook, every few months sending another tale to Dreadful Tales, which rejected his work because the editors did not understand it, or Burning Leaves, which rejected it because it was too traditional. Eventually, a friend of the family convinced the Ambergris Department of Broadsheet Licensing Publications to print Spacklenest’s first collection of stories, entitled Scars & Other Weapons. Published in hardcover, the collection sold only 25 copies and the Ambergris Department of Broadsheet Licensing Publications dropped Spacklenest from their stable of safety pamphlet authors. For several years, Spacklenest did not attempt publication again, instead pouring himself into writing the classic stories that would eventually be issued in the posthumous Frankwrithe & Lewden collections Nights Beyond Night and Dark Sings The Lark Beyond the Veil. F&L would also publish his Lord Hood novel posthumously, a work which sold well and has led to Spacklenest’s current cult status. After writing Lord Hood, a dejected Spacklenest abandoned both fiction and his ancestral home, relocating to a small apartment off ofAlbumuth Boulevard and accepting an archival position at theMorhaimMuseum. In later years, under the pseudonym “Anne Sneller,” Spacklenest published a number of nonfiction books, including A Historyof Traveling Medicine Shows & Nefarious Circi. Lord Hood and his short stories were discovered among his personal effects when he died of stab wounds inflicted by a Porfal coin knife during a particularly violent Festival. See also: Burning Leaves; Dreadful Tales; Frankwrithe & Lewden;MorhaimMuseum; Porfal.

SPORE OF THE GRAY CAP, THE. The tavern in which much of Duncan Shriek’s Early History was written. A marvelous hide-away more fully described in The Hoegbotton Guide to Bars, Pubs, Taverns, Inns, Restaurants, Brothels, and Safe Houses.

SPORLENDER, NICHOLAS. The author of over 100 books and instructional religious pamphlets, including Sarah and the Land of Sighs, Truffidian Votives for the Layperson, and A List of Daily Sacrifices for Members of the Church of the Seven-Edged Star. Many of Sporlender’s books incorporate the ideas of the “fighting philosopher” Richard Peterson. Sporlender frequently collaborated with the artist Louis Verden before a violent disagreement ended the relationship. In his memoirs, he wrote of the break up: “It’s not like we didn’t know when it started. It was Verden’s obstinence that started it. And his insipid obsession with Strattonism. He simply could not let it be. It was always Stratton this, Stratton that. I’d ask him, ‘Please — lay off the Strattonism. I’m trying to write.’ Eventually, I took up Peterson’s teachings just to block out the Strattonism. But he wouldn’t stop.” A five-time recipient of the Southern Cities’ most prestigious literary award, The Trillian, Sporlender moved to Morrow in later years with his wife and three dogs. See also: Burning Leaves; Caroline of the Church of the Seven-Pointed Star; Dreadful Tales; New Art, The; Peterson, Richard; Stratton ism;Verden, Louis.

SPORN. The term commonly used throughout the Kalif’s Empire to refer to the gray caps. The Kalif’s people refer to the gray caps’ sacred symbol as the “zetbrand” and their underground land as the “zetland.” See: Fungus; Kalif, The.

STOCKTON. Even more boring than Morrow. Might as well be populated with monkeys or Oliphaunts than with people. Not even a religious institute to save it from boredom. Incidentally, the city ofDuncan Shriek ’s birth. See also: Busker, Alan.

STRATTONISM. Believers in the mythos of the bicameral brain, Strattonists have always been in conflict with the followers of Richard Peterson, primarily because neither religion can understand its own teachings, let alone those of its opponent. A typical entry from the guiding text of Strattonism, The Consciousness of the Origin of the Bicameral Breakdown, reads “The compresence and prehension of a monism in keeping with the gravitational relinquiships and syntaptic revolutions of the mind cannot be undersuaged in any discussion of concantimated narratizations or even when considering slorbenkian bilateral mandates.” One diagram in the book depicts a brain with arrows pointing to “The Bandaic Hallucinatory Pit,” “The Bilateral Convulsive Impulse,” and “The Origin of the RP Heresy.” The belief that the brain can talk to itself has led to some confusing conversations at Strattonist meetings. See also: Peterson, Richard.

— T —

TARBUT, ARCH OF. Richard Tarbut was a wealthy man who liked to have things named after him.

The Arch of Tarbut is one of those things. The Tarbuts moved to Ambergris from Morrow, where they sold, among other items, stoves and canaries. Tarbut named only one condition for giving money to construct the arch: that, by means of a ladder, he and his family be allowed to hold a party atop the arch upon its completion. This, indeed, he did, but, bothered by a mud wasp, lost his balance, and fell to his death, attaining a condition very close to that of Brandon Map. See also: Map,Brandon.

THRUSH, THE. A doomed ship in the Ambergrisian navy, commissioned during the reign of Trillian the Great Banker. At that time, even oak-built ships succumbed to rotted timbers because the alternate wetting and drying of wood created favorable conditions for the growth of fungi. Reports from the naval command to Trillian stated that “In building and repairing ships with green timber, planks, and trennels, it is apparent by demonstration to the ship’s danger and by heat of the hull meeting with the greenness and sap thereof immediately putrefies the same and draws that ship to the dock again to repair within six years what should last 20 years.” Directly prior to The Thrush leaving port, an even harsher report stated “The planks were in many places perished to powder and the ship’s sides more disguised by patching than usually is seen upon the coming of a fleet after a battle. Their holds not cleared nor aired but (for wont of gratings and opening their hatches and scuttles) suffered to heat and molder until I have with my own hands gathered toadstools growing in the most considerable of them, as big as my fists.” Despite this, The Thrush was sent down the River Moth toward Nicea. Within five days, the crew complained of a general itchiness. Within ten days, the ship was so encrusted with fungi that the crewmembers were trapped inside. Forced to eat the fungi for sustenance, they began to mold and the ship collapsed and sank far from shore on the twentieth day. No one survived. See also: Fungus.

TRILLIAN THE GREAT BANKER. One of the greatest rulers Ambergris has ever known. Under Trillian, Ambergris became a miniature empire, but more importantly, a center for business and finance. Ambergrisian banks spread across the continent and at one point accounted for 75 percent of all financial transactions in the South. Trillian, more than any ruler before him, was able to snuff out the power of the Brueghelites through a methodical process of depriving them of capital and resources. Strangely enough, his downfall came at the hands of cababari pigs. A slave in love to his mistress, he bristled over a perceived insult handed to her by a cababari breeder and signed an order that cababari would no longer be considered fit for eating and would be banned from the city. Just six months later, a group of Cappan Restorationists funded by a powerful pig cartel ousted Trillian. See also: Cababari.