This isn’t a post about Fire on the Velvet Horizon, nor is it a post about how good Patrick Stewart (no relation)’s writing is. Perhaps some day I’ll do a full review of Fire on the Velvet Horizon. No, right now I want to talk about the back of the book, the space traditionally reserved for a sales pitch. Fire on the Velvet Horizon is (ostensibly) an RPG bestiary, illuminating the monsters of a campaign world that doesn’t exist.
Stewart put a poem here.
I am like no other thing.
A gem not famed for brightness.
Dead, but only listen and I live.
Voiceless, I speak.
Thoughtless, I lie.
Deeper than dark water.
Sharper than a swift sword.
Stranger than a drugged dream,
I serve in ordered ranks that never
change.
Till night,
When a gallery of shadows paints your thoughts,
with more colors than a careless artist’s hand.
Lose me or be lost in me.
I am a place you may not go.
Once there I will not let you leave.
Though made of broken things I am
yet whole.
And guard one hundred murders.
Let’s kill your friends for fun.
Let’s all just stop a moment and bask in the sheer brilliance and the utter inscrutability of this poem… riddle… thing? You have to know RPGs. You have to know bestiaries. You have to be someone who’s poured through a Monster Manual page by page, daydreaming what it’d be like to introduce them to a game.
Let’s kill our friends for fun.
Damn that man can write.
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