The headsman of Nuremburg, Franz Schmidt put an end to hundreds of convicts, each of whom merited a line in his ledger: "Schober was beheaded by favour; Marti was hanged, and the bleachers made him a pair of very white hose, a doublet and stockings of Cologne linen."Introduced by the best-selling author, Brian Evenson, Pilum is proud to publish four new writers who take us into the forgotten reality behind these laconic entries in Schmidt's fascinating sixteenth-century execution records. Brian Renninger, JB Jackson, Lester Glover, and John Daker rescue final truths only fiction can properly deliver. The back half of this beautiful, yet lugubrious volume examines the reality principle at play in the fiction of Jack Vance by leading Vance critic, Paul Rhoads. Further fictions from Messrs. Alexander Palacio and Charles Crabtree transport us to settings uncomfortably proximate and movingly legendary. Finally, Jeffro Johnson meditates on the significance of death, ludic and otherwise, among players of D&D.