The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

There lived Grossbarts before Hegel and Manfried, and, unfortunately for this happy world, there have lived Grossbarts since. A complete chronicle of that benighted clan would fill more volumes than every holy text of every people of every land, and so rejoice that there is little more recorded here. The Brothers Grossbart received exactly what they deserved down in that hallowed desert tomb, and it is easy to assume they lived only as long as their water and air held out. Thus, their end may have been more merciful to humanity than the tragedy that was their birth.

Before their eradication, preachers of the Grossbart Heresy alleged that Saint Hegel gave his own life a second time to save his brother, but the tales of madmen and heretics are just that. Far, far to the east, however, there lies a chain of islands with curious beliefs. The people of that land have long held that eating the flesh of a sea maiden grants immortality; perhaps, then, the Brothers Grossbart still dwell in that lightless tomb long buried in sand, tugging their beards for all time.

Bibliography

Only through scholarship is the writer capable of realistically rendering the historical world. Some of the books below were consulted prior to beginning this work in order to inspire and inform, others were read after its completion to check specific details. Most were extremely useful, and all offered something, even if their tokens wound up excised with cruel snips of the drafting process. This lamentably brief-to some, doubtlessly overlong to others-bibliography reflects of course only the specific books consulted immediately before, during, or after the drafting of the novel; many more titles I can no longer recall laid the groundwork for my understanding of the era and its beliefs.

As for the study of the Grossbarts in particular, I am strongly indebted to several esteemed specialists in the history of that ignoble line: Senor Ardanuy, Heer Dunn, Monsieur Rahimi, and Kyria Tanzer. In addition to their help with this adaptation, their previous works on the subject have been a great boon and are cited accordingly. Finally, while their works are not to be found below, the tutelage of many a non-Grossbartian historian and teacher helped me immeasurably-Steve Armstrong, Bruce Boehrer, Margaret Burkley, Roy Campbell, Ken Foster, Doug Fowler, Don Howarth, Marlow Matherne, Rod Moorer, Paul Reifenheiser, Mike Rychlik, Bawa Singh, Paul Strait, and Trisha Stapleton, to name but a few.

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