Directions in an Empty Place

being d20 random guides to a new destination

Hydramwt and Pele-Peq came upon a lonely crossroad. Behind, the Pianure of pale-blown weed and light-eating dust. Ahead, the same. Left, a distant ridge in shades of rust. Right, a distant haze in shades of mauve. Clouds like tattered muslin promised nothing. Above wheeled Sky, the angels in their fast star girdle, the devas in their slow star carousel, the stranger things painted across the motionless void beyond.

But here, here Hydramwt and Pele-Peq stopped and stood alone. No fellow traveler. No local mind. No watcher remnant. Two men-humans and their iron horses, dumb golems of no thought. Their monitor wards clicked and whirred. Static on the voice lines. Survival on the radiant bands.

“Where…” Hydramwt licked parched lips, then gestured slowly, “Side roads.”

Pele-Peq paced forward, eyes biological and crystal and radiant sweeping.

“There…” he pointed at a small thing, a forgotten thing, a telling thing.

---

This Telling Thing,
This Clue to a Destination,
This Direction

1. a roadryad of the way, promising magic succor, pixellated

2. a signpost of chitin and metal composite, bullet-riddled

3. a mile marker of plastone, uncorroded

4. an autotourist stop-golem facility, abandoned

5. a dead traveler with a scribbled map, disassembled by sour ants

6. a waking dream sent by a radiation ghost, strange and sweet

7. a holomirage projecting above the horizon, streaked with static

8. a trail of foodstuff wrappers, autofabricated

9. a wandering mule, its missing owner now vome-embraced

10. a dead potemkin town, a regional poster map proudly declaring its purpose

11. a biomechanical looking glass at a panoramic spot, cheap

12. a one-way portal of monochrome, glitching

13. a posse of decayed zombies, on a repetitive supply run

14. a magnetic anomaly, to draw the compass or the gaze

15. an electromagic disturbance, to disrupt spell and speech

16. an old road, fossilized with words imprinted in its surface

17. a gargling stream strewn with fragments washed out of a vault or facility

18. a fuel canister, empty but tempting, fresh-fabricated

19. an autobus stop of living concrete, blood-starved

20. a shrine garlanded in fungal flowers, sun-eating

---

Hydramwt came closer, watching eye focusing while his reading eye tried to make sense of the crumpled form.

Child. Doll. Suit. Skin. Raisin. Vine. Pod. Sac.

“Clone sac,” he whispered and prodded it with his walking stick, “Dried but recently made.”

Pele-Peq’s radiant eyes lit up as he scanned the distant horizon. “Hidden in the haze, you think, a man-factory?”

Hydramwt nodded, “Functioning.”

The iron horses, moved by some ancient subroutine, shuffled closer and one spoke, “You look like you are trying to undertake a scouting mission. Would you like help with that?”

---

Over the last few years I've struggled to figure out exactly what kind of posts to publish on my wordpress blog. I’ve even struggled to find the time to prepare fictions for this substack. Most of my writing headspace has gone into the books I've been writing over on the patreon. Same for art and illustration.

I'm also not really a fan of poking websites to make them work and look pretty. I've toyed with different ideas—doing one kind of content here, another on my website, another on patreon, a third on this or that social media platform. Maybe building some kind of app to host random tables. Maybe switching to some other provider over wordpress. But all that feels like just stirring the ephemeral digital pot, where all things corrode and disappear sooner or later.

So, I'm going to try something simpler. I'm just going to share random tables and stories and pieces that don't fit into my books. This may mean some content duplication across platforms.

Oh well, bottles on the digital ocean.

Let’s see where the stories end up, yeah?

—L.
Seoul, Spring, 2025