‘It goes like this...

     ‘First, there were the Great Houses. It's difficult to say where they came from – indeed, it's possible they no longer have an origin as such. They restructured history around themselves a very long time ago, so that they and their Homeworld had always been at the centre of all meaning within the Universe.

     ‘To call them time-travellers is like saying fish are known to like a dip occasionally. They inhabit time in the same way we of the so-called “Lesser Species” inhabit our own architecture and infrastructures. Their domination of history has always been unquestioned: if few outside the Houseworld even suspected their existence, it was simply because they were, like air or gravity, too fundamental to the world to be easily observed.

     ‘To the Houses, one concept alone is the ultimate taboo, and the unthinkable sin: paradox. Fairly inevitable, then, that their first major grouping of schismatics would adopt that name (along with some rather cumbersome death-totem paraphernalia including skull-masks and skeleton-armour) as its emblem and its motto. Faction Paradox was founded as “House Paradox” by Grandfather Paradox, and has rarely felt the need to express itself more subtly than that.

     ‘The Faction took it upon itself to further infuriate the mainstream of Great House culture by entering into alliances with the Lesser Species, and even elevating their members to full membership of House Paradox. Its occasional relations with the Houseworld have been on an icy footing ever since, and the formation of a second breakaway-group (the Celestis, who rather crassly opted to withdraw from the Universe altogether in order to become gods) has done little to thaw them.

     ‘What has changed things on the Houseworld is the War.

     ‘The identity of the Houses' War-time enemy (“the Enemy”, as some scholars insist on melodramatically dubbing them) is one of those perennial mysteries which become less interesting the more you really examine them. You'd think the main point was that, whoever these people are, they're powerful enough to challenge the Great Houses on an equal footing – but historians have shown time and again that they have a remarkable capacity to miss the forest for the growth patterns of moss on one particular tree. There's wide agreement that, if the enemy were to be positively identified, the revelation would come as something of an anticlimax. Indeed, one of the more beguiling theories is that the enemy has no fixed identity, and that the Houses' real War is with an archetypal concept of enmity.

     ‘Whatever the truth may be – if any – the War has been in progress for nearly five decades now, and is in the process of radically and repeatedly restructuring reality, from the moment of creation on up. As can be imagined, those so-called Lesser Species are not doing too well out of the whole deal. Hence, many have assumed, the foundation of the City of the Saved...’

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All material © Philip Purser-Hallard 2003 except where otherwise noted, and not to be used without permission.
Scary skull mask © Lawrence Miles 2002.