George Frederic Watts THE world and this—whatever other name men have chosen to designate the sky whose vaulted roof encircles the universe, is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal, immeasurable, a being that never began to exist and never will perish. What is outside it does not concern men to explore and is not within the grasp of the human mind to guess. It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, nay rather itself the whole, finite and resembling the infinite, certain of all things and resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace all things that are without and within, at once the work of nature and nature herself.  — Pliny, Natural History  Some years ago, I started posting about a world I wanted to run and play games in. It turns out, other people liked that, too. So, I posted more: a full array of classes, adventures, monsters, and the like. Simple fact is, I have a lot written down for Morning Stars, and I may as well collect as much as I can in ...

 A long time ago, kings were buried with the wealth of their lives, often including pets and servants, under the vain assumption that these material things would be carried on to the immaterial. To this day, many of these old royal treasury-tombs are haunted by the restless dead, rot-clouded eyes filled with fading visions of a promised afterlife. Šar Šarrāni Anaximandros knew exactly what awaited him. His client-line under King Surya , King of the Seventh Day , was in decline after a struggle for power and privileges with a rival dynasty. So, rather than let so many things fall through his fingers like sand, he sealed himself away in an obelisk with his most prized possessions to await his slow death. Perhaps, in the vastness of eternity, he would have his day again. For a few centuries, the obelisk has been a forbidden place. The water that pours from it is clear, the grass is green, the trees tall and strong. Those who stop there, stop briefly. Those that stay there do not retu...