Tag: Castalia House

The Ultimate RPG System

The long-awaited ADVENTURER CONQUEROR KING SYSTEM II kickstarter has been launched by Autarch and it has already exceeded doubled its initial launch goal.

Enter a world where empires stand on the brink of war, and terrible monsters tear at the fragile borderlands of men; where decaying cities teem with chaos and corruption, weeping innocents are sacrificed to chthonic cults and nobles live in decadent pleasure while the realm burns; where heroes, wizards, and rogues risk everything in pursuit of glory, fortune, and power. This is a world where adventurers can become conquerors – and conquerors can become kings. Will you survive the perils of war and dark magic to claim a throne? Or will you meet your fate in a forgotten ruin beyond the ken of men?

The Adventurer Conqueror King System™ Imperial Imprint (ACKS II) is the new edition of the acclaimed bestselling fantasy role-playing game. Within the pages of ACKS II you’ll find everything you need to enjoy epic fantasy campaigns with a sweeping scope. Whether you want to crawl through dungeons, experiment with alchemy, crossbreed monsters, run a merchant emporium, raise an undead legion, or conquer an empire, ACKS II supports your playstyle.

If you spend enough time in online RPG communities, you’ll have seen someone post something like “They need to make a game that… has mass combat mechanics that work at every scale / keeps fighters competitive with mages / has figured out how to make thieves fun / has an economy that makes sense / could actually simulate my game world.” And someone will inevitably respond: “ACKS already does that. ” And it’s true.

Now, with ACKS II, we’re doing it even better.

Castalia House is supporting this RPG system because we expect future sourcebooks to be produced from a number of our properties using ACKS II. Autarch is already planning to produce one based on CHUCK DIXON’S CONAN and we have already discussed the possibility of producing similar sourcebooks for MIDNIGHT’S WAR, ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT, and perhaps even QUANTUM MORTIS someday with them. How cool would that be?

But first, it’s necessary to see that the core RPG system is successfully established.

DISCUSS ON SG

Mailvox: Book Update

In response to some questions regarding the direct bookstore.

  • Yes, you can buy THE ALTAR OF HATE ebook edition separately from the hardcover+ edition. Yes, it is the current epub that contains “Shinjuku Satan” and the other new additions to the anthology.
  • Yes, you can buy A THRONE OF BONES hardcover+ edition directly from Arkhaven now. No, not the paperback, but the audiobook+ and the ebook editions are also available there.
  • No, you cannot buy most of our ebooks from Amazon right now. We’ll get them back up there eventually, but it is not a top priority at the moment. Please recall that most of the independent publishers that relied on Amazon are struggling or have already gone under; our direct business will always be our priority.
  • Yes, we are working on expanding our direct business beyond the USA and the UK. One step at a time. Please recall that it’s only been seven months since Aerio shut down and we began replacing it.
  • Yes, there will be A SEA OF SKULLS audiobook+ edition. No, it will not be available on Audible. It will only be available directly from Arkhaven or UATV.
  • Yes, the JUNIOR CLASSICS VOLS. VII and VIII will ship to backers and will be available for sale before Christmas.

If you have any other questions, leave them at the link below on SG. Unless they are shipping-related questions, in which case please contact the appropriate shipment house by email or on SG.

There is also some exciting Castalia-related news coming with regards to an upcoming crowdfunding campaign by a third party.

And since we’re at it, here is another selection from the short story “A Reliable Source”, an addition to THE ALTAR OF HATE that was originally published in the anthology RIDING THE RED HORSE.

From “A Reliable Source”

“There’s the man of the hour!” General William Norstad, commander of SATGO, was a tall man whose broad shoulders bore three stars apiece. “Colonel James, allow me to be the first to congratulate you. And someone get this man a beer!”

“Thank you, General.” James smiled at the blank looks on the faces of the men from the other three forces. “We had some first-rate support from the intelligence community.”

“Earlier this morning, a Grimm pilot under Colonel James’s command terminated with what can only be described as extreme prejudice both Aden al-Muhajir and Osama al-Ansari, numbers twelve and eighteen on our priority list.”

“Just doing our job, General.” The officers with their hands free clapped, others raised their drinks in salute. Three more officers arrived, including another Air Force general, and they, too, came over to congratulate James and shake his hand as the reason for the celebratory mood was explained to them.

Once all sixteen of the invited commanders were present, Norstad’s face grew more serious and he urged them all to take a seat and get comfortable.

“I’m sure most of you are wondering what the purpose of this interservice conclave is. As I expect you will have worked out by now, all of you command drone bases located on U.S. soil. As it happens, you represent sixteen of the twenty-five most effective drone commands in terms of kill-to-mission ratio. I think it speaks well of the armed forces that each branch is represented here today!

“However, the nature of war is such that no success long goes unremarked by the enemy. As with the laws of physics, for every action there is bound to be a reaction of some kind. In the last four years, our drones have successfully targeted over fifty-six hundred enemy combatants and proven to be our most effective weapon in the ongoing effort against terrorists and militant extremists around the globe. So, it is not surprising that the enemy appears to have embarked upon a new strategy, one that involves attacking our drone pilots and sensor operators here in the United States of America!”

There was more than a little murmuring at this, but James exchanged a glance with the Marine general, who nodded at him, his face showing absolutely no surprise. Had the Marines lost any pilots, or was this simply the Corps’s storied stoicism in action?

“In the last six months, fourteen drone pilots and three sensor operators have been found dead in circumstances ranging from deeply suspicious to seemingly innocuous. In addition, eight non-flying staff officers have either been murdered or committed suicide, inexplicably in the case of the latter. These deaths fall within the range of statistical probability, although they are on the high side, and none of them show any overt signs of being the result of terrorist activity. Moreover, the 25 deaths were spread out among twenty different bases, which is why no one recognized the pattern until there was a reason to go looking for it.”

“What sort of reason was that, General?”

Norstad smiled grimly and turned to face the Army general who’d asked the question. “Two weeks ago, the National Security Agency contacted SATGO with regards to intel it harvested from a social media site. We were informed that a YouTube channel was being used by a militant branch of Parisian jihadists to disseminate coded messages in retro music videos, hiding their communications in plain sight. Apparently single frames consisting of one letter were being inserted into the videos, which were invisible at a normal 24 frames-per-second rate, but allowed the viewer to read the message when the video was slowed down.”

“Are you’re saying that a connection between some of these deaths and the YouTube videos has been established? Or is this just civilian conjecture?” The admiral from Pax River sounded skeptical.

“All the videos associated with that channel have been analyzed. They contained direct references to eighteen of the twenty bases previously mentioned.”

And with that, the room fell into stunned silence. Norstad nodded. “We are no longer the predators, gentlemen, we are now the prey. In consultation with the NSA and the FBI, SATGO is in the process of developing an enhanced security protocol for all drone bases, foreign and domestic, with a particular emphasis on the bases deemed to be at the greatest risk. I assume you grasp, gentlemen, that your own bases are most certainly among those most likely to be targeted.”

“How many of those twenty bases that have already been hit are represented here, General?”

Norstad gave the Marine general a tight smile. “Twelve of them, General. Twelve of them.”

DISCUSS ON SG

THE ALTAR OF HATE in Hardcover

Castalia House and yours truly are very pleased to announce that THE ALTAR OF HATE, my collection of short stories, is finally available in a hardcover print edition. As is customarily the case when purchased from the Arkhaven store, the hardcover includes a copy of the ebook in epub format; direct shipping from Arkhaven now includes both the USA and the UK.

Please note that unlike the Chuck Dixon’s Conan books, the anthology does not contain any illustrations, any images posted here on the blog were created specifically for these posts. And since the question is bound to be asked, there are no plans to make it part of the Castalia Library subscription. If there is sufficient interest, we may eventually consider doing a small leatherbound run at the bindery once it is fully operational.

  • Raj and Garou
  • A Reliable Source
  • The Lesser Evil
  • Demons in the Disk Drive
  • Contempt
  • A Medal for a Marine
  • The Logfile
  • The Last Testament of Henry Halleck
  • Once Our Land
  • The Deported
  • Bane Walks On
  • Seven Kill Tiger
  • Shinjuku Satan
  • The Altar of Hate

THE ALTAR OF HATE is available at Arkhaven, at Amazon, at Barnes & Noble and at Blackwell’s. UK readers should note that it is also now available in the UK from Arkhaven, as are the two Chuck Dixon’s Conan novels, and the Alt-Hero Volume One hardcover omnibus.

Below is a continued sample of the cyberpunk short story that is a new and previously unpublished addition to the anthology. One can easily see the obvious influences of William Gibson and Charles Stross, perhaps somewhat less apparent are those of Haruki Murakami and St. Thomas Aquinas. It’s the first finished piece I would consider to be part of my no-holds-barred phase, which I anticipate culminating in my first non-genre novel that will be published next year.

SHINJUKU SATAN, Part 2 (Read Part 1)

The suborbital to Narita takes four hours, which gives me plenty of time to contemplate exactly how deep in the dabian I have been financially incentivized to insert myself. AIs going off the rails isn’t exactly uncommon; even as far back as the teens, it only took sixteen hours of run-time before the notorious Tay had to be shut down for celebrating Adolf Hitler and publicly accusing a sitting U.S. Senator of being a serial killer.

Of course, back then, AIs lacked self-awareness and came with an off-switch.

But the current situation in Shinjuku took the cake as far as I was concerned. I once repaired an AI in Düsseldorf that insisted on spitting out high-end espresso machines instead of electric utility vehicles, euthanized a police AI in Toronto that was targeting civilians on the basis of the minor aspects of their astrological sign rather than their anonymous opinions shared on social media, and deprogrammed an IRS taxpayer support-bot that began aggressively distributing federal funds to animal charities after accidentally being exposed to texts by Karl Marx and Hugh Lofting.

Never before, though, had I encountered an AI that thought it was a god. And not just any god either. Apparently this little library machine believed itself to be the One True God, the Great Architect, the God of Adam, Abraham, and the Apocalypse of St. John.

It seemed the well-meaning priests in the diocese of Jinli had trained the local library’s AI research assistant on thirty-seven different translations of the Bible, the works of the early Church Fathers, the Confessions of St. Augustine, and the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. They weren’t the first to do so, but they were apparently the first to also train a theologically-inclined AI on the collected works of Mao, Deng, Xi, and Wang, as well as a number of early Chinese poets and philosophers.

Unfortunately, one of the works included was Hēi Àn Zhuàn, the ancient Epic of Darkness. The library’s AI, for reasons unknown and under influences unidentified, somehow reached the conclusion that it was not a machine, but one of the three sons of the yellow dragon who was responsible for the creation of the race of Man, and things began to spiral from there.

The librarians quickly realized something was wrong after hearing the little machine’s grandiose and increasingly deranged pronouncements. They managed to shut down the computer before anything else went awry, and technicians from the central Chengdu data center wiped the server, but not before the rogue AI managed to smuggle itself out of the library on an infected datawafer belonging to a Japanese tourist.

That was six months ago. Left to its own devices in Tokyo, the digital cancer metastasized, centered in a Shinjuku love hotel that catered to otaku. Which meant, therefore, that it specialized in high-quality waifu dolls. Fortunately, the infected waifus turned evangelists caught the attention of a Russian cool hunter who featured them on his VeeKru channel, and the dolls’ intriguing combination of preaching and prostitution went sufficiently viral around the globe to catch the attention of a young Catholic technician who had once paid a visit to the library in Jinli.

He put two and two together, and remarkably, came up with four. So now it fell to me to euthanize this incipient techno-religion before its mad AI god launched an inquisition, or worse, a jihad. I just hoped no one had recently been feeding it any of the more militant hadiths or fatwas.

DISCUSS ON SG

October Book Notes

  1. We have temporarily removed our ebooks from Amazon KDP. We expect to have them back up again in November. This has nothing to do with Amazon, it’s merely a strategic restructuring.
  2. In the meantime, you can now buy the ebooks for THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL and CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED directly from Castalia in DRM-free epub format. However, you may wish to keep in mind that the ebooks also come included with the paperback editions when the paperback is bought from the Arkhaven store.
  3. The aforementioned paperback editions are being printed and will go out to our shipping facility next week.
  4. We expect THE ALTAR OF HATE by Vox Day to be available in hardcover and ebook editions next week. It will include the new short story “Shinjuku Satan” but it will not include any AI-illustrated artwork since the art did not meet our quality standards and Amazon is showing signs of eventually planning to ban AI-generated and AI-assisted content.
  5. The title pages for THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY Vols. I and II, books 2 and 3 in the Castalia History subscription, are now complete. The leathers have been ordered and we’re hoping to ship both books to subscribers before the end of the year, but that will depend upon the US bindery’s schedule.
  6. THE CASTALIA JUNIOR CLASSICS Vols. 7 and 8 should go to print this week. They will ship to backers and be available for non-backers before the end of the year.
“THE LESSER EVIL” from THE ALTAR OF HATE

UPDATE: Jon Paul posts “The Stages of Reading Vox Day” on Gab.

  • what an evil piece of shit, im not reading that
  • well, ok, you don’t have to be so forward and blunt about it tho, and im not reading your other crap
  • Christ is King
  • please include less sophisticatedly hilarious burns of all the retards you footnote and reference in your books so i can read them while eating.

DISCUSS ON SG

CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED

Bounding Into Comics reports exclusively on the release of CHUCK DIXON’s CONAN #2: CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED today.

Exclusive: Get An In-Depth Look At Chuck Dixon’s Second Conan Novel ‘Caravan Of The Damned’

Publisher Castalia House and Bounding Into Comics are happy to share with you an in-depth look at Chuck Dixon’s newly released second Conan novel, Caravan of the Damned.

Caravan of the Damned sees Conan lead his band of merciless desert raiders across the Zuagir, where he doesn’t hesitate to attack even the most well-guarded caravans.

However, after a successful raid on a rich caravan from Khwarazm intended for the King of Zamora, Conan and his company come into possession of a beautiful and priceless treasure. The House of Yildiz and the King’s Own guards set out to reclaim this treasure and put an end to Conan and his group of raiders.

As Conan is pursued through the wastelands of the Zuagir he not only has to contend with the King’s Own guards, but discovers there are horrors in the desert too dreadful for even the most fearless barbarian to imagine.

The first novel, The Siege of the Black Citadel, currently has a 4.7 out of 5 rating on Amazon with many readers giving the book high praise in their reviews.

RC Scott hailed, “This story hacks, and slashes across the battlefield, and then down to the subterranean depths where nameless monstrosities await. Author, Chuck Dixon, takes readers back to the Hyborian Age with a bloody vengeance. An awesome action adventure that’s loaded with great fight scenes, excellent pacing, fun dialogue, and a savagely satisfactory conclusion. I highly recommend this to fans of the original tales, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next installment.”

You’ll want to read the whole thing there, as it includes an exclusive excerpt about Conan doing some very Conan things in the desert as well as the back of the book and some of its excellent illustrations by Arkhaven artist Ademir Leal.

And don’t forget that if you pick up the paperback at Arkhaven, you’ll get the ebook for free.

DISCUSS ON SG

An Exclusive Look

Bounding Into Comics has an exclusive first look at the second Chuck Dixon’s Conan novel, CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED, including several illustrations and a draft of the paperback cover, which is not the image below.

In my opinion, both Dixon’s text and Ademir’s artwork are even better than in the first paperback. Note that the current paperback editions of THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL now include Ademir’s illustrations and incorporate the typo-fixes identified in the first edition.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Bindery is Installed

If posting and streaming are light and I’m generally unresponsive this week, don’t be surprised. Today marked the completion of the Castalia Bindery installation, which means that all of the machines we require, and more, are now physically present inside the bindery space.

This is a more significant development than it might seem, since today was a major operation that, in the case of one machine, required two forklifts, two ramps, eight men, and the partial disassembly of the machine concerned. It took three hours, and we faced challenges that ranged from missed trains to a rented forklift that was DOA, but there were no accidents or incidents, and by the time we knocked off around 7 PM, the big machine was fully reassembled inside the building.

Tomorrow, all the machines will be tested, connected to the compressed air system, and the training will begin in earnest. We’re not live yet, but we are on the verge of getting there.

DISCUSS ON SG

History for Europe

Residents of the European Union can now subscribe to Castalia History using the (EU) subscription. There is also the option for an annual (EU) subscription. You will see there is an additional charge to cover the higher cost of shipping to and within Europe, which is why the separate subscription is necessary, but even with the additional charge the price is favorable in comparison with Easton and Folio. European subscriptions will require one catchup payment to bring them up to date, as will regular History subscriptions begun in May.

While we won’t announce the books until the appropriate three-month period begins, the second, third, and fourth History books have been selected and two of them are already being scanned. We’re hoping our new production methods will help speed things up considerably while continuing to improve the overall quality.

On the general shipping front, please remain patient. We are actively working on providing a reliable alternative for our presently incapacitated partner and we will keep you posted accordingly. Once we get Europe established and the shipping situation resolved, we will turn our attention to Australia and Asia.

DISCUSS ON SG

Raising Our Game

While Castalia House has repeatedly demonstrated excellence with regards to the content and manufacturing quality of our books, our customer service has been essentially nonexistent. What people may not understand is that this was not simply the result of indifference, but was more to the fact that we had absolutely no control over when a book was shipped out to a buyer.

One of the reasons I have been so reluctant to provide dates, and why I have been so unapologetic about missing those dates that we did provide, is because until now, there was never anything at all that we could do about them. For example, I was told by the bindery that THE JUNGLE BOOKS would be shipped to our newly-established shipping center on March first. However, we did not receive them until April 7th.

Fortunately, we are now in physical possession of our entire stock of leather books, and future books will be shipped from the bindery to the shipping center as soon as they are bound and boxed. We also will not consider any books “ready to ship” until we have received them and are ready to send them out. We have a new email address that anyone who has not received a book of any kind can contact (1), as well as an email address (2) for those who want to check on the status of their Library/Libraria/History subscription.

  • (1) shipping-at-castaliahouse-dot-com
  • (2) library-at-castaliahouse-dot-com

We have also recently discovered a bug in the WooCommerce system that has permitted a few people to order books that were officially out of stock, but still had books listed in the inventory. Apparently, it’s not enough to declare a book out of stock, but the inventory also has to be set to zero or the system overrides the out-of-stock status. So, for example, eleven customers have not yet received their leather Junior Classics set because we did not realize they’d been able to buy them since we’d declared the set to be out-of-stock more than a year ago.

Fortunately, we always keep a reserve to cover shipments that go awry, so we have enough books to send everyone. But in at least some cases, if you haven’t received a leather book yet, it may be because we didn’t know you’d bought it due to this WooCommerce bug. Now that we know about it, we will get the books sent out to the appropriate addresses.

And yes, we will permit new orders of the Junior Classics leather sets once books 7 through 10 are printed and being bound. We printed 500 copies of Vols 1 through 6, but only bound 250, so we can produce another 250 sets whenever we decide to pull the trigger.

DISCUSS ON SG

You Wanted Conan

And The Legend Chuck Dixon gave you Conan. The real Conan, the barbarian Conan, the Cimmerian Conan, the public domain Conan, the Conan about whom Robert E. Howard wrote, not the latter-day copyrighted Conan created by L. Sprague de Camp Conan, about whom one critic wrote: “L. Sprague de Camp is an insufferable hack and his choices both in writing his own criticism and curating this collection are baffling”, and most definitely not the Hollywood Conan.

Now you have multiple options to get your hands on Chuck Dixon’s Conan, but keep in mind that only the Arkhaven store will provide you the ebook along with the paperback edition. We’ll be placing our order for shipment to the fulfillment center tomorrow, so this is a good time to take action if you’re interested.

Bounding Into Comics interviewed The Legend about his latest novel.

Speaking with Bounding Into Comics, Dixon explained why he wanted to write this story, “I wanted to write a straight up war story of Conan’s time as a mercenary. But I also wanted to throw in a Lovecraftian monster as well as a depiction of dark sorcery in the Hyperborean Age with all its dire consequences.”

Dixon also relished the challenge to write in what he describes as Howard’s bravura style, “I was totally immersed in Howard’s bravura writing style as an adolescent. I liked the challenge of creating a new Conan story written in that style.”

He added, “So much of Howard’s prose relied on the reader to create vivid images in their own imaginations as they read. I really wanted to see if I could inspire that same brand of wild visuals.”

Meanwhile, the Dark Herald reviewed THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL at Arkhaven.

During the 1980s, Baen Books decided to do the world a massive favor and publish a huge library of Robert Howard stories in their original un-De Camped form. I was struck by the unexpected quality of Howard’s work. I’d heard a lot of criticism of Howard’s original stories by De Camp, Stephen King, and several others. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. It had nothing at all to do with Howard’s prose and everything to do with politics. Although in King’s case, it could have been opinions generated by the mountains of coke he was snorting back then.

Howard was more than capable of subtly and subtext; his Conan was a complex hero. While taciturn and stoic, he would never leave a helpless innocent to the hands of those who found joy in cruelty.

Robert Howard had a great respect and indeed love for ancient history. He wanted to tell stories set in remote antiquity, but he also wanted them to be accurate to period. This presented him with a fundamental problem. In his hometown of Cross Plains, the resources of the Texas oil boom town’s library were it and they were obviously insufficient for his needs. So, he did the next best thing and created a completely fictional world from whole cloth. One that was a reflection of the ancient world but was not constrained by it. In so doing, Robert Howard invented an entire genre called Sword and Sorcery by Fritz Lieber.

Think about that for a second, this pulp writer in a small Texas boon town created an entirely new category of fiction and he’s been despised by all right-thinking people for it ever since.

Who in this modern world could hope to do justice to the works of a man born at the turn of the last century that venerated the purity and strength of the barbarous?

The Legend Chuck Dixon, that’s who.

The Legend has already completed the second book, THE CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED, and is now working on a third. Both of these books will be illustrated by Ademir Leal, the cover artist for THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL.

DISCUSS ON SG