“Dead Man’s Map”

If it weren’t for the sudden, panicked scramble to quarters, the encounter would almost have been funny.

This is an unusual story for me.

I’ve been a guest several times on the Worldbuilding for Masochists podcast, where they have a long-running schtick of asking authors to contribute setting and culture ideas to a shared fictional world — one centered on a network of magical Gates that allow people to teleport across the world (but they can’t bring anything with them, not even their clothes). After some years of this, they decided: why not get those authors together for a shared-world anthology?

I’ve written for a world not of my own creation before, of course, specifically with my Legend of the Five Rings fiction. But that was work for hire, where the IP was owned by someone who had sole control over what was and was not canon; here it’s a much more freewheeling affair, where we all got a story bible and then basically got told to have fun. Me, I ran straight in the direction of pirates, tattoos, and the obligation to help enchanted corpses go home for their funeral rites. And, unlike those work for hire examples, I’m allowed to reprint the story in a collection of my own.

But it will make more sense and be more fun in context, so why not pick up the anthology — or my collection The Atlas of Anywhere, in which this story is reprinted!

Cover Gallery

cover art for Traveling Light