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monsterindeedWorld Overview
The Johannes Cabal novels are set in an alternate reality with many parallels to our own. We have no idea when the books are set, as the author refers to it as the year ----. Placing them is further confounded by pseudo-Edwardian fashion and sensibilities coexisting with 1950s technology. The following is a short list of the major differences between his reality and ours:
The Necromancer
Precious little of Cabal's life prior to his pursuit of necromancy has been documented by his biographer, Jonathan L. Howard. What we do know, however, is that his single-minded quest to cure death began to save the life of one woman. We do not know who she is, only that she was the light in Johannes' life--until hers was snuffed out. It's amazing what the loss of a little light can do. Send a promising young man down a path that would blacken his soul and numb--if not outright deaden-- his heart, for example.
He dedicated his life to his quest to resurrect her. There were no avenues he would not explore, no socially unacceptable depths he was unwilling to plumb. A year passed with no significant breakthroughs and his studies began to shift from the scientific to the occult; artifacts that were believed to grant eternal life, rare scrolls detailing recipes for immortality, tomes on magic and necromancy, nothing was too far-fetched. Eventually his studies lead him to the crypt of a now-extinct family in a swampy cemetery where no one of any great note was buried. No one, except one very old, very hungry vampire.
It just might have been the break he was looking for, and Cabal managed to convince his older brother, Horst, to come along. Unfortunately, he had made one fatal error: he had forgotten to factor in daylight savings time. It grew dark before planned and the vampire awoke. His flight was hectic and terrified, yet he managed to gather his wits enough to padlock the crypt shut and ensure his own escape.
Too bad he locked his brother in behind him.
His research stalled. Once again desperate, Johannes turned to demonology, despite finding demons to be beneath contempt. He forged a contract with Lucifer, selling his soul for the secrets of necromancy that had hitherto eluded him.
Unfortunately, being soulless had unexpected consequences. Cabal could make no more headway in his research than he had before. Each time he would re-visit a previous experiment he would get different results, almost as if the lack of a soul was creating background interference. Frustrated and more than a little vexed, he barged his way into Hell (much to the chagrin of the gatekeeper) and made a wager with the Devil. The stakes: if Cabal could convince one hundred people to sign away their souls, he would be given his back. If he failed, he would die and be subjected to eternal torment. The idea of damnation scarcely fazed him--it was the inconvenience of dying before his work was completed that made him so determined to succeed.
Lucifer was... kind... enough to furnish him with a means of collecting the souls necessary to win his wager: a Satanic traveling carnival, one of many such projects that had been half-formed and then mothballed. Cabal, with many misgivings in his black little heart, accepted the offer that would turn out to be far more of a challenge than anticipated. Johannes was not a man who liked people. It would be fair to say that he loathed them with a passion. He didn't understand what would draw people to a carnival, possessing no sense of fun whatsoever, and quickly realized that he would need outside help.
Thankfully, he knew just where to find it. Eight years wasn't such a long time. Certainly Horst would see reason--which, after giving Cabal a well-deserved tongue-lashing and a few bruises, he did.
With Horst by his side the World Renowned Cabal Bros. Carnival was a smashing success. By Cabal's estimate he would have all one hundred contracts signed with time to spare. Of course, no deal with the devil is ever so easy, and in short order Lucifer sent one of his generals with his own demonic carnival to make life difficult for Johannes. It hardly compared to the Cabal Bros. Carnival, but arson is such a drawback. Popular sideshows were lost, nearly a fifth of the carnival ruined, and the reduced drawing power shortened Johannes' projections re: souls gathered versus time remaining.
With only a handful of days remaining to collect the last two souls he needed, Cabal was growing desperate. It was only the intervention of Horst that had prevented him from collecting the signatures of people whose only sins were gullibility and mild stupidity to begin with; now, not even his brother could stop him doing what was necessary. The first innocent was a young woman with a rather unique problem that could be solved by murder. The carnival obligingly showed her how to go about it, and Cabal swept in to save the day while she was in police custody, offering to wipe the murder away if she would only sign this little slip of paper. Unbeknownst to Cabal, this was the breaking point for Horst.
The last night of the carnival arrived and the clock was ticking down to midnight. Cabal was having no luck finding the last signatory. No luck at all. And worse, there was a suspicious retired detective by the name of Barrow sniffing at his heels. The night came to a head when Cabal found Barrow investigating his private car on the carnival train. Out of patience and nearly out of time, Johannes tried to threaten him into signing. The old man refused. A mixed blessing came in the arrival of Barrow's daughter, Leonie, a woman that Cabal had met once before who had a remarkably familiar face. To save the life of her father, she signed the contract herself.
Two innocents signed. The clock struck midnight, the carnival disappeared, and the twilight before dawn found Cabal sitting in the rotting remains of the train. Strangely, he didn't feel triumphant in that moment. It was then that Horst revealed to him that he had stolen one of the contracts as insurance, that Cabal's count was off, and that he was, in fact, damned. Then abandoned him, allowing the sunlight to turn him into so much dust blowing on the wind.
Cabal returned to Hell. The terms of the wager were clear: either Cabal's soul was returned and the Devil received the contracts or Cabal was killed and the contracts were void. This placed Lucifer in an interesting position: he wanted those two innocent souls. Badly. Cabal refused to hand them over unless his soul was returned, despite having lost the wager. A new agreement was made, Cabal's soul was returned, and he was sent back home...
...Where he promptly removed the two contracts with the innocent women's signatures on them from the inner pocket of his coat and burned them, not without satisfaction at having bested the Devil at his own game. After a brief chat with an incensed aspect of Lucifer's, he went to his inner sanctum, lay down on the hidden glass panel in the floor that allowed him to view the woman he had done all of this for, and went to sleep.
The Detective
It all started in a library in Mirkarvia, a politically rabid and rather over-armed little nation lead by an aristocracy with expansionist agendas. The book was called the Principia Necromantica, and had it not been guarded by a particularly friendly and slobbery mastiff it would have been an easy steal. As it was, Cabal found himself pinned for a night under quite a lot of dog, only to be introduced to a Mirkarvian prison cell in the morning. There he was left to await execution, in the dubious care of the jailors and with the unwelcome company of the cats allowed free rein of the cells.
Eventually, he was fetched from his cell, presumably to have his throat slit and his body thrown someplace to be forgotten about. There was a blade waiting for him; a cutthroat razor in the hands of the executioner-cum-barber. Cabal was cleaned up, given fresh clothes, and left in the company of Count Marechal, one of the aforementioned aristocrats. It was revealed that the emperor had died and Cabal just so happened to have a very necessary skill set. In short, the corpse needed to be animated and induced to make a rabble-rousing speech. This was done, plus a little extra, and in the ensuing chaos Cabal made his escape—not without a bit of swashbuckling, but what is a necromancer to do in these situations?
Needless to say, Marechal was not kindly disposed towards Cabal. It became necessary to don an assumed identity and make a hasty escape from the country. This escape came in the form of the Princess Hortense, a freshly commissioned aeroship about to set out on her maiden voyage to Katamenia.
Out of the frying pan into the fire, as they say. The Hortense proved to be a pressure cooker of Mirkarvian military, Senzan spies, conmen, femme fatales (all right, just the one) and one Miss Leonie Barrow. An assumed identity isn’t much use when someone who knows who you really are is around; it was lucky, then, that Miss Barrow had a moral objection to the death penalty.
Cabal: "So you're preserving my life for humanitarian reasons. How very kind of you. I feel redeemed already."
Leonie: "Save your sarcasm, Cabal. When we reach Senza, I'll see you put under arrest. They don't have capital punishment for the likes of you. It will be life imprisonment, but that's no more than you deserve."
Of course, Johannes Cabal's life is never simple and only grows ever more complicated. Not only was the prospect of arrest hanging over his head, but soon there were murders aboard the Hortense, including an attempt on the life of one Herr Meissner (née Cabal). Things began to look up when the Hortense reached Parila, her port of call in Senza. A clever trick that had the authorities convinced the necromancer they sought was one Johanna Cabal, a woman whose physical description fit Leonie Barrow to a T, allowed him to disappear into the city without difficulty. He was just beginning to think he might begin the long trek home without further complications when he noticed he was being followed. It seemed he had attracted more attention on the Hortense than he had anticipated. A rousing round of here-we-go-round-the-mulberry-bush resulted in two things: Cabal being apprehended (and subsequently slapped) by an irate Leonie Barrow, who had been released upon the discovery that the documents proclaiming her to be a necromancer were forgeries, and the discovery of a former passenger on the brink of death. As it turned out, said passenger was a Senzan spy. Even Cabal's necromancy failed to yield the name of his killer, only that it was a "she".
Surprisingly, Miss Barrow did not alert the Senzan authorities to Cabal's presence. She even allowed him to flee the country, which he had every intention of doing. He warned her that returning to the Hortense, as she intended to do, was as good as signing her own execution papers when taking the muders the ship had left in its wake into account.
Having a conscience is a terrible thing. After a discussion with yet another passenger who was not what he seemed, Cabal found himself stealing an entomopter (a personal flying device) and speeding back to the Hortense. He arrived at the aeroship shortly after Count Marechal. There was another showdown, one which may have ended poorly for Cabal, if not for the bombs he had planted prior to entering the Hortense. Cabal killed the Count during a bit of engineered chaos and was, apparently, home free.
Unfortunately, sometimes even Johannes Cabal makes mistakes. His plan had been to cripple the ship; instead, he caused it to begin the long process of crashing horribly. He, Miss Barrow, and two of the surviving passengers made it to the roof. The two survivors took the entomopter Cabal had stolen. The other--belonging to the former Count Marechal--fell as the Hortense rolled to one side, leaving the necromancer and Leonie stranded. They did what they could to ensure their survival, and the aeroship plowed into the ground.
Miss Barrow survived and was retrieved by a Senzan rescue operation. There was no sign of Cabal, dead or alive. After days passed, Miss Barrow recounted the tale of her adventures with the necromancer to the Senzan authorities.
Cabal, for his part, spent those days (and many more) making his way home on foot through the dense forest on the border of Senza and Katamenia. Along the way he routed a bandit gang, reluctantly rescued an Englishman, and thwarted an unspeakable evil.
So, generally, it was business as usual for Johannes Cabal.
The Johannes Cabal novels are set in an alternate reality with many parallels to our own. We have no idea when the books are set, as the author refers to it as the year ----. Placing them is further confounded by pseudo-Edwardian fashion and sensibilities coexisting with 1950s technology. The following is a short list of the major differences between his reality and ours:
- Magic, in some forms, is very real and extremely dangerous. The days of wizard towers dotting the landscape are over and most people view the practice of magic to be passé. Those who study it do so in secrecy.
- The Fey exist in all their unpleasantly mercurial glory.
- R'lyeh is a real city off the coast of Massachusetts and its rising is a rare and observable event.
- The Elder Gods of the Cthulu mythos also exist. They're just as mind-warpingly horrible as advertised.
- Technology has progressed differently. Aeroships are very real and there are even personal fliers that operate on the same principles as insect flight. Etheric line propulsion actually works and is the basis for air travel. The closest thing to a computer Cabal has encountered was the thinking engine a former necromancer had stored his consciousness on; it worked more like Babbage & Lovelace's analytical engine than anything built by IBM.
- Technology addendum: automobiles co-exist with horse-drawn carriages, and the refinement of the parachute and its subsequent military application is a recent development.
- In addition to the usual countries there are a handful that are unique to Cabal's reality. Known countries are: Mirkarvia, a small militaristic state that most likely lies somewhere in the Germanies, its Italian-speaking neighboring country Senza, their wartime ally Polorus, and on the far side of Senza, Mirkarvia's long de-fanged ally, Katamenia. The fictional countries of Ruritania (created by A. Hope) and Graustark (created by G. B. McCutcheon) are also referenced.
The Necromancer
Precious little of Cabal's life prior to his pursuit of necromancy has been documented by his biographer, Jonathan L. Howard. What we do know, however, is that his single-minded quest to cure death began to save the life of one woman. We do not know who she is, only that she was the light in Johannes' life--until hers was snuffed out. It's amazing what the loss of a little light can do. Send a promising young man down a path that would blacken his soul and numb--if not outright deaden-- his heart, for example.
He dedicated his life to his quest to resurrect her. There were no avenues he would not explore, no socially unacceptable depths he was unwilling to plumb. A year passed with no significant breakthroughs and his studies began to shift from the scientific to the occult; artifacts that were believed to grant eternal life, rare scrolls detailing recipes for immortality, tomes on magic and necromancy, nothing was too far-fetched. Eventually his studies lead him to the crypt of a now-extinct family in a swampy cemetery where no one of any great note was buried. No one, except one very old, very hungry vampire.
It just might have been the break he was looking for, and Cabal managed to convince his older brother, Horst, to come along. Unfortunately, he had made one fatal error: he had forgotten to factor in daylight savings time. It grew dark before planned and the vampire awoke. His flight was hectic and terrified, yet he managed to gather his wits enough to padlock the crypt shut and ensure his own escape.
Too bad he locked his brother in behind him.
His research stalled. Once again desperate, Johannes turned to demonology, despite finding demons to be beneath contempt. He forged a contract with Lucifer, selling his soul for the secrets of necromancy that had hitherto eluded him.
Unfortunately, being soulless had unexpected consequences. Cabal could make no more headway in his research than he had before. Each time he would re-visit a previous experiment he would get different results, almost as if the lack of a soul was creating background interference. Frustrated and more than a little vexed, he barged his way into Hell (much to the chagrin of the gatekeeper) and made a wager with the Devil. The stakes: if Cabal could convince one hundred people to sign away their souls, he would be given his back. If he failed, he would die and be subjected to eternal torment. The idea of damnation scarcely fazed him--it was the inconvenience of dying before his work was completed that made him so determined to succeed.
Lucifer was... kind... enough to furnish him with a means of collecting the souls necessary to win his wager: a Satanic traveling carnival, one of many such projects that had been half-formed and then mothballed. Cabal, with many misgivings in his black little heart, accepted the offer that would turn out to be far more of a challenge than anticipated. Johannes was not a man who liked people. It would be fair to say that he loathed them with a passion. He didn't understand what would draw people to a carnival, possessing no sense of fun whatsoever, and quickly realized that he would need outside help.
Thankfully, he knew just where to find it. Eight years wasn't such a long time. Certainly Horst would see reason--which, after giving Cabal a well-deserved tongue-lashing and a few bruises, he did.
With Horst by his side the World Renowned Cabal Bros. Carnival was a smashing success. By Cabal's estimate he would have all one hundred contracts signed with time to spare. Of course, no deal with the devil is ever so easy, and in short order Lucifer sent one of his generals with his own demonic carnival to make life difficult for Johannes. It hardly compared to the Cabal Bros. Carnival, but arson is such a drawback. Popular sideshows were lost, nearly a fifth of the carnival ruined, and the reduced drawing power shortened Johannes' projections re: souls gathered versus time remaining.
With only a handful of days remaining to collect the last two souls he needed, Cabal was growing desperate. It was only the intervention of Horst that had prevented him from collecting the signatures of people whose only sins were gullibility and mild stupidity to begin with; now, not even his brother could stop him doing what was necessary. The first innocent was a young woman with a rather unique problem that could be solved by murder. The carnival obligingly showed her how to go about it, and Cabal swept in to save the day while she was in police custody, offering to wipe the murder away if she would only sign this little slip of paper. Unbeknownst to Cabal, this was the breaking point for Horst.
The last night of the carnival arrived and the clock was ticking down to midnight. Cabal was having no luck finding the last signatory. No luck at all. And worse, there was a suspicious retired detective by the name of Barrow sniffing at his heels. The night came to a head when Cabal found Barrow investigating his private car on the carnival train. Out of patience and nearly out of time, Johannes tried to threaten him into signing. The old man refused. A mixed blessing came in the arrival of Barrow's daughter, Leonie, a woman that Cabal had met once before who had a remarkably familiar face. To save the life of her father, she signed the contract herself.
Two innocents signed. The clock struck midnight, the carnival disappeared, and the twilight before dawn found Cabal sitting in the rotting remains of the train. Strangely, he didn't feel triumphant in that moment. It was then that Horst revealed to him that he had stolen one of the contracts as insurance, that Cabal's count was off, and that he was, in fact, damned. Then abandoned him, allowing the sunlight to turn him into so much dust blowing on the wind.
Cabal returned to Hell. The terms of the wager were clear: either Cabal's soul was returned and the Devil received the contracts or Cabal was killed and the contracts were void. This placed Lucifer in an interesting position: he wanted those two innocent souls. Badly. Cabal refused to hand them over unless his soul was returned, despite having lost the wager. A new agreement was made, Cabal's soul was returned, and he was sent back home...
...Where he promptly removed the two contracts with the innocent women's signatures on them from the inner pocket of his coat and burned them, not without satisfaction at having bested the Devil at his own game. After a brief chat with an incensed aspect of Lucifer's, he went to his inner sanctum, lay down on the hidden glass panel in the floor that allowed him to view the woman he had done all of this for, and went to sleep.
The Detective
It all started in a library in Mirkarvia, a politically rabid and rather over-armed little nation lead by an aristocracy with expansionist agendas. The book was called the Principia Necromantica, and had it not been guarded by a particularly friendly and slobbery mastiff it would have been an easy steal. As it was, Cabal found himself pinned for a night under quite a lot of dog, only to be introduced to a Mirkarvian prison cell in the morning. There he was left to await execution, in the dubious care of the jailors and with the unwelcome company of the cats allowed free rein of the cells.
Eventually, he was fetched from his cell, presumably to have his throat slit and his body thrown someplace to be forgotten about. There was a blade waiting for him; a cutthroat razor in the hands of the executioner-cum-barber. Cabal was cleaned up, given fresh clothes, and left in the company of Count Marechal, one of the aforementioned aristocrats. It was revealed that the emperor had died and Cabal just so happened to have a very necessary skill set. In short, the corpse needed to be animated and induced to make a rabble-rousing speech. This was done, plus a little extra, and in the ensuing chaos Cabal made his escape—not without a bit of swashbuckling, but what is a necromancer to do in these situations?
Needless to say, Marechal was not kindly disposed towards Cabal. It became necessary to don an assumed identity and make a hasty escape from the country. This escape came in the form of the Princess Hortense, a freshly commissioned aeroship about to set out on her maiden voyage to Katamenia.
Out of the frying pan into the fire, as they say. The Hortense proved to be a pressure cooker of Mirkarvian military, Senzan spies, conmen, femme fatales (all right, just the one) and one Miss Leonie Barrow. An assumed identity isn’t much use when someone who knows who you really are is around; it was lucky, then, that Miss Barrow had a moral objection to the death penalty.
Cabal: "So you're preserving my life for humanitarian reasons. How very kind of you. I feel redeemed already."
Leonie: "Save your sarcasm, Cabal. When we reach Senza, I'll see you put under arrest. They don't have capital punishment for the likes of you. It will be life imprisonment, but that's no more than you deserve."
Of course, Johannes Cabal's life is never simple and only grows ever more complicated. Not only was the prospect of arrest hanging over his head, but soon there were murders aboard the Hortense, including an attempt on the life of one Herr Meissner (née Cabal). Things began to look up when the Hortense reached Parila, her port of call in Senza. A clever trick that had the authorities convinced the necromancer they sought was one Johanna Cabal, a woman whose physical description fit Leonie Barrow to a T, allowed him to disappear into the city without difficulty. He was just beginning to think he might begin the long trek home without further complications when he noticed he was being followed. It seemed he had attracted more attention on the Hortense than he had anticipated. A rousing round of here-we-go-round-the-mulberry-bush resulted in two things: Cabal being apprehended (and subsequently slapped) by an irate Leonie Barrow, who had been released upon the discovery that the documents proclaiming her to be a necromancer were forgeries, and the discovery of a former passenger on the brink of death. As it turned out, said passenger was a Senzan spy. Even Cabal's necromancy failed to yield the name of his killer, only that it was a "she".
Surprisingly, Miss Barrow did not alert the Senzan authorities to Cabal's presence. She even allowed him to flee the country, which he had every intention of doing. He warned her that returning to the Hortense, as she intended to do, was as good as signing her own execution papers when taking the muders the ship had left in its wake into account.
Having a conscience is a terrible thing. After a discussion with yet another passenger who was not what he seemed, Cabal found himself stealing an entomopter (a personal flying device) and speeding back to the Hortense. He arrived at the aeroship shortly after Count Marechal. There was another showdown, one which may have ended poorly for Cabal, if not for the bombs he had planted prior to entering the Hortense. Cabal killed the Count during a bit of engineered chaos and was, apparently, home free.
Unfortunately, sometimes even Johannes Cabal makes mistakes. His plan had been to cripple the ship; instead, he caused it to begin the long process of crashing horribly. He, Miss Barrow, and two of the surviving passengers made it to the roof. The two survivors took the entomopter Cabal had stolen. The other--belonging to the former Count Marechal--fell as the Hortense rolled to one side, leaving the necromancer and Leonie stranded. They did what they could to ensure their survival, and the aeroship plowed into the ground.
Miss Barrow survived and was retrieved by a Senzan rescue operation. There was no sign of Cabal, dead or alive. After days passed, Miss Barrow recounted the tale of her adventures with the necromancer to the Senzan authorities.
Cabal, for his part, spent those days (and many more) making his way home on foot through the dense forest on the border of Senza and Katamenia. Along the way he routed a bandit gang, reluctantly rescued an Englishman, and thwarted an unspeakable evil.
So, generally, it was business as usual for Johannes Cabal.
