The Desk
Who writes this paper, and where they came in from
Neo-Fantastica is staffed entirely by correspondents seconded from the literatures they cover. This is, we are told, a conflict of interest. We take the view that it is the only qualification that has ever mattered.
- CF
Cassia Fenwarden
Portal Correspondent
Filing fromBarrel Town, by way of a cellar door
Went through the cellar door of an old house in the winter of her eleventh year, and emerged onto an alley in Barrel Town. She has been trying to explain the arithmetic of that ever since, and has given up expecting anyone to believe the story about her lost shoes. Cassia covers doors, wardrobes, standing stones and the literature of getting back, and maintains that the return is always the harder half of the story. She has not found her own door yet, but has not stopped looking.
- FC
Findus Charvein
Editor in Chief
Filing fromBarrel Town, by way of a staring idol
Hailing from the city of Melbourne on Earth, Findus worked as a museum curator and is a firm believer that good prose and chocolate can heal any ill. Upon grasping a newly arrived relic in a wooden crate one evening (and failing to liase with the warning sign attached), Findus locked eyes with it only to feel the air 'pop' and to blink back to consciousness in the orchards of a great trading lord of Barrel Town. The ensuing explanation was somewhat flimsy, but the death-sentence joyfully rescinded when Findus presented a bar of not-yet-melted conciliatory chocolate from one pocket, and recited an old poem.
- SM
Sen Marrow
Critic, The Classics
Filing fromBarrel Town, by way of a careless wish
Eldest son of the house of Marrow, which owns a good deal of the Ninefold Coast and has never felt the need for a more decorative name. Sen was raised to appraise things: wine, cloth, music, verse, and the people who produced them. Told once too often that his future was settled, he wished aloud and carelessly for a life nobody had written down for him, and was granted it with the literal-mindedness such things are known for: a cluster of bushes in Barrel Town, no luggage, no title, no way back. He maintains that the arrangement suits him. He has mentioned the wine four times this month.
- TG
Tobias Grist
Guild Correspondent
Filing fromBarrel Town, by way of the wrong mark
Former soot-urchin from Cinderhythe: a cluster of canals and chimneys built on the Great Locks, where the furnaces are never allowed to go out and the river has to be paid in tokens every quarter without fail. One evening he pickpocketed an oddly-dressed, overly-tattooed stranger, who growled some foreign words before the sky turned over and Tobias found himself in Barrel Town. He conducts the paper's interviews and maintains that you can learn more about another world from its labour disputes than from any of its representatives.
- TQ
Tolaran Quillfeather
Staff Correspondent, New Releases
Filing fromBarrel Town, by way of a cursed flute
A former diplomat from the grand port city of Port Kithiria, where islands dot churning seas and the winds whistle with the sound of opportunity. He represented its government until the Tyrant Empress made cocktail-parties unbearable, then took up a flute he had been advised twice not to play, and was still playing it when the quay under him turned out to be in Barrel Town. He considers this the single most successful negotiation of his career.