This fine-literature story covers seven hundred years, and everything is funerals - either the participants in a funeral or a paper funeral, or newspaper obituaries about either kind. The funeral customs vary, with a casket or urn of ashes for true deaths, but they are substantially outnumbered by the paper funerals. Each paper funeral has somewhere from three to twelve people, at least three of them with speaking parts, reciting the funereal rites for the name that has been laid to rest, with at least two people splitting the first person portions of the narrative - "I lived and shone brightly and believed in my righteous cause..." (insert some statements about said cause) and at least one person taking the role of the present, welcoming in the new name and persona into their newer home, guild, or in later centuries social/interest club. The background events show radical changes in the political structure of the area several times, and it becomes increasingly suggestive that several of the people holding paper funerals have in fact lived for many normal human lifetimes. It never becomes totally clear why they live so long, what they hope to achieve, and whether any of them have died a true death by the final pages of the novel.

A hubris-paean story is set in a pocket world, the Black Below, outside the reach of the tyrants of the universe, hidden in the shelter of three immobile gods of secrets and bindings, life and health, and curiosity and paradox (respectively). The surroundings of the life god have been conquered and monopolized by an immortal aristocracy who (very politely) execute anyone who lives beyond their dictated maximum lifespan, a law which they all cheat by giving up their names (but not their identities or social ties) and permanently joining the half-ghostly eternal council that advises the nominal ruler. A daughter of one of these rulers is offered true immortality like her father and his line, but defies them by giving it away to a rival country's admiral purely to spite her father and his ways, and they slowly assemble a team of revolutionaries from many backgrounds, unified in their desire to overthrow the ghost councilors and their figurehead, and spread life eternal to all the world, and then to take the fight to the tyrants above. They fail, and the epilogue shows them dispersing across the pocket world to hide.

A second part shows a new protagonist learning of the attempt, which had been imperfectly suppressed from public attention by the aristocracy. They set out to find the lost revolutionaries and prepare a second attempt, learning from the failures and ready to try again. They criss-cross the Black, finding both the people and the relics of the first attempt, and making other allies who can harness the power of the other gods of the Black or advance technology for use against the tyrants. They find all the Seven Who Fell, who nickname them the 'New Marshal', but cannot rally them all to their banner; some were crippled by the loss, and the later chapters show the Marshal struggling to to re-ignite the spark of life for a few who have lost hope. The second book ends as a war council begins, the Marshal looking around at the faces of those they've brought together, and the fierce determination they've managed to impart.

Translator's notes state that this was an unfinished trilogy; the third part took long enough to write that fanfiction filled the gap, and the author ended up publishing their plot outline rather than writing book three herself. This was popular enough that for a few years it was a popular trend to do it on purpose, mostly within the hubris-paean genre. However, this translator doesn't particularly like any of the dozens of third-book fanfiction for this particular story, and prefers leaving it in the unspoken-plan/brain-trust state where the reader assumes that they will be victorious in the end.

A setting bible, primarily intended for a tabletop role-playing game but with notes on conlangs, art, etc., that seem to be directed toward written or visual fiction in the same world. The world is created by a pair of gods - the Lonely God, who is a benevolent creator figure, and the Jealous God, who was their first creation and resents all later ones for taking attention away from him. The cultures and societies are heavily shaped by various Archetypes that have incarnated into the world at various times - the Knight, the Judge, the Tyrant, the Thief, the Sage, the Smith, the Berserker - all of whom lived unnaturally long lives, and most of which left both magical relics and institutions behind that later people could use to 'channel' them and use lesser forms of their magical powers. The Lonely God is responsible for the benevolent and cooperative archetypes, the Jealous God for the selfish and destructive ones; it is known that they can never repeat themselves, nor can either of them manifest in more than one place in the world at a time.

A collection of folktales about the Wandering Man, a traditional folk hero. The Wandering Man (usually but not universally male) usually says he is a merchant or a message-carrier, but sometimes claims to be a tinker, mason, or minstrel; he always has enough skills to make his claims seem plausible. The wanderer brings down evil lords, catches murderers, exposes frauds, and in more fantastical stories banishes evil spirits, prevents unnatural plagues, and stops vampires, werewolves, and trolls. However, while he always leaves things much better than he found them on net, these stories are almost never purely positive. He leaves ruined farmlands, broken homes and barns, and clashing communities in his wake, and in the more severe cases, often causes deaths or maimings. Every story ends with him leaving, usually with the community shouting curses at his retreating back despite being grateful for his accomplishments. Many stories include young people admiring him and assisting him, but many of these become the most furious cursers by the end of the tale. A common way communities are left in furious disarray by his actions is exposing the connections between the several faces/personas prominent or controversial members have, breaking the boundaries between home, work, and hidden - frequently breaking apart a village's local mystery cult or a town's private hobby clubs.

'Reinvention', a coming-of-age story set in the late medieval period. An apprentice bloomer is unsatisfied with his home and his apprenticeship, and his Hidden* is in a gang. (One of the other apprentices is as well, probably, but uses a different name and the connection is overtly ignored.) They're eventually caught causing property damage, and one of the adults who catches him invites him (and just him) to a mystery cult's rite - he attends flippantly and uses the same name as for the gang, which is suggested to show he's unserious and attending mostly to avoid the inviter turning him in. The cult, Children of Daedalus, reveres an ancient, possibly-mythical inventor and emulates him, with many ceremonies being collaboration trying to create new technology, though this is more going through the motions than actual science or innovative engineering. Gradually he stops being flippant and engages more honestly with the rites, and as he is more invested, his dissatisfaction with the rest of his life reduces. As a milestone showing his maturity and admitting to deception, he holds a paper funeral with most of the cult present and is re-introduced to them with a new name, chosen from a list of cult pseudo-saints. The final scenes show him achieving journeyman status in his apprenticeship and celebrating during three successive meals - dinner with his peers from the bloomery, lunch with his family the next day, and then a private dinner with his initial sponsor from the cult and another sponsor-sponsee pair he's become close with.

*Not well explained by the translator, who clearly considers it too obvious to both going into detail about. Careful reading shows this is a persona or name kept separate from the others; the protagonist initially has two other personas, one for home and one for his apprenticeship, but these aren't kept separate as strictly as the Hidden is.

Heart's enthusiastic reaction to Reinvention gets some puzzled responses, which after a few days causes some interested research, and then an interview with the author and the translator.

"So, I understand you two have been pleased but confused with the positive response?"

"Initially, yeah - clearly we had a bigger cultural gap than I understood when doing the initial translation."

"I obviously didn't know about them when writing - and I was pretty uninvolved in the publishing negotiations. I'm honored, but it took a while to understand what they were seeing."

"So, anything you want to clear up?"

"The only part that seems crucial is the 'devotional' thing. I have a lot of respect for the Daedalan philosophies - and respect for knowledge and honesty, honest collaboration, is part of that, that's why this seems crucial - but I'm not a believer, and I don't think much of my audience here in - Piecemeal is the name you used, right? - is either. It was mainly meant to be fiction about Hiddens and growing up. Daedalans were closer to modern sensibilities than most mystery cults in the period, and that was the primary reason I chose them."

"I really should have paid more attention to that in translation, for which I apologize. I saw split names being common and assumed the cultural context was similar, and that was... well, dumb of me."

"Knowing how that was received, do you have a more detailed explanation?"

"Of course. This will still be imperfect, since our understanding of their culture is very imperfect, but the things I'd like to focus on are the roles of Hidden as escape valve and as an avenue for self-exploration. People in Piecemeal don't have 'plurality'-"

"Not quite, it's about one in three hundred but we do have it occasionally."

"-Huh. Okay, well, we mostly don't have it, but since the early empires, it's been widely acknowledged that people don't do well if they have to display a consistent identity and set of beliefs with everyone they know. Changing your mind is hard, and much harder if you're being watched and someone who disapproves can jump on an admission of possible error and throw it back in your face. So we don't let the job follow you home, or vice versa - even for normal personas, it's at minimum impolite to reference events that happened at home with someone you also know at work, or the other way around. And Hiddens go beyond that - they're things you're not willing to let touch your work or home life at all, to think in a very different way. It's generally considered unhealthy not to have one, because things that are "ego-dystonic" with your usual personas tend to build up backlash if you can't step away from that normal you and inhabit a different set of beliefs and perspective some of the time. Nowadays with most people in big cities, it's easy to have several hobby personas which can be Hidden or not, and frequently slide from Hidden to public over time, but historically most people were in villages or rural areas and so it was difficult to have even one Hidden. Which is why mystery cults lasted much longer than the dominant civilizations that created them - they were a shared Hidden subculture, where even if you met all the same people, you could behave very differently and have a crutch for not having those actions be seen as affecting the rest of your life."

"And obviously there are more and less healthy ways to express your Hidden - youth gangs were pretty common, and we still have some of those. That tends to vent the backlash and stress, which is cathartic, but rarely actually lets you step back and assess the things that are stressing you out. I had some first-hand familiarity with that kind of thing, which is part of why I wrote Reinvention, to share that with people."

"Also a good point! That's also an important part of what Hiddens mean to Piecemeal. I think also there's what they aren't - there's something I've seen mentioned in Heart fiction and message, 'fronting', where there's a notion of - multiple people with different skills and memories in the same mind, who can take turns being the person in control? That is not part of personas as we understand them, even Hiddens. Sometimes someone will conceal a skill because they learned it as a Hidden and don't want to leak information, but that's a conscious decision, a deliberate adjustment. I've never heard of someone being actually unable to recall things from another persona, past or present."

"Hence a paper funeral being like a corpse funeral but clearly not."

"Yeah, it's the death of a name, and generally some important beliefs about yourself or the world, but it's a social thing, you're making note of the way you've changed but it's all still you. The point of a paper funeral is for your close friends or family to acknowledge growth and not hold you to being the person you were in the past. And the first strong change of mind tends to be the most important, because when you've seen the two conflicting perspectives you get some wisdom about understanding future changes of perspective and your beliefs not being universal."

"I understand that as an author, you're also motivated by the study of history and loss of culture?"

"Yes, it's a common view in society-studies that we're at risk of losing a big part of our history. Mystery cults have been waning since the industrial revolution made big cities feasible again, and particularly in the most recent generation of internet-fed hobby groups, most people have much more abundant opportunities for Hiddens and other personas. Since almost no one was ever open about holding cult beliefs in the public eye, as people have moved their Hiddens away from the cults, religiosity has cratered. Which isn't a bad thing, but it does mean that there's a risk that anything we don't document about the cults this generation will vanish from the historical record entirely, and we'll forget a big part of our forbearers's lives. So I did take pains to talk to actual members of the Children of Daedalus, mostly from my parents's generation, and depict the rites accurately as much as they ever had universal shared rites. I made a couple changes for dramatic purposes, but the companion reader - did you get that translated? No? Well, give the publisher the rights free when you do, bill me for the lagniappe - highlights those, and that's coauthored by my metamour, he's a historian specializing in medieval Europa and Europa persona studies. We also tried to chart the known changes to the Daedalan rites from the imperial collapse to the early urban period and cross-pollination with similar cults like the Forges of Wayland, though as he frequently reminded me that is all pretty speculative."

"I enjoyed it, it's good popular-history work. Less informative for another culture, probably, but hopefully still useful and entertaining. Any final thoughts before we wrap up the interview?"

"I hope the people of Heart aren't too disappointed that the outreach from religious groups isn't returned, and I hope you still find the same appreciation for it despite understanding how that's a break from our culture."

"What she said - I'm not great with my own words. I'll get the companion translated and sent soon, hopefully ready to go when you publish the interview. Thanks."

This trilogy's first book, Night's Hand, starts as three intertwined superhero stories. A hooded detective called Shuffle tracks down crime across his city with a mix of detective work, mystically-accurate hunches, and disregard for propriety and law, tracking the structure of the criminal crews and publicly exposing the links between the 'Admirals' who lead them and their public personas as philanthropists. An ancient king wakes in the urban era and saves his city-state from several disasters; he rapidly rescues the passengers of a crashing ship before its engines rip it apart, holds up a breaking bridge with his bare hands while it evacuates, and fights a small army of 'metal men' - slightly-steampunk robots; he gives an interview as he tries to understand the way his country has changed since he reigned, and a newspaper calls him 'a royal waste of space, but also a royal absence of vices', and he picks up the nickname 'Royal'. A woman who calls herself 'Storm-Eyes' appears from a thunderstorm, flying through a cluster of cities tracking drug cartels and rigged gambling rings with her speed and supernatural senses, proving impossible to lie to and extremely difficult to deceive or mislead. They interleave as they each find links between the problems they face and an international network which seems to be run with someone who can influence the minds of those around them, and the three collaborate on a bust to roll up the network and catch the mastermind. As they restrain him, he shrugs and declares "I am just an instrument"; moments later his body goes slack and comatose, and starts to disintegrate before their eyes.

The second book, Sun's Crown, follows them as they try to find whoever controlled the 'instrument'; they find several other masterminds, all of whom disintegrate the same way, and others who control more armies of metal men. As they investigate, they find evidence that these conspiracies are older than they thought, and the further they look, the older it seems to be. They ultimately find that it is as old as Royal, and that the 'prophet' who has declared that the king would return in the future is weak with age but alive. He tries to make common cause, but to Royal's despair, Shuffle and Storm-Eyes are suspicious and successfully demonstrate he's a tool of the same conspiracy. The confrontation between them successfully convinces Royal mid-fight, and he turns to confronting his 'patron', who is maneuvered into bragging about his backers controlling all of history. They defeat him, but he vanishes like the others and they are again left with questions about who, exactly, they have declared themselves against.

The third book is Truth's Winds, and its cover does not give away the genre (because they have a nice matched set of books and don't want to spoil it from book one) but the title page unsurprisingly marks its genre as hubris-paean. The hero trio prepare for war, recruiting many more minor superpowered people. They descend into hidden foundations of cities the world over, ruins of ancient empires (which conceal outposts of their enemy much less ruined than they appear), and a base which is sunken inside a massive caldera, nearly sunk into the planet's mantle. Ultimately, they turn and ascend into space, purging first a base on Earth's moon and then the headquarters, a massive station disguised as a moon of Venus, where they find the human-like aliens who have been puppeting their civilization from its beginnings. Despite losses, they are victorious, and end on an optimistic note -  they are left with a wealth of advanced scientific knowledge, which they will be able to use to improve humanity's lives and to travel the stars.

A thriller/romance novel set during a cold war between two fictional early-modern states which had a brief but very messy total war when the monarchy controlling the region collapsed, about a generation before the novel is set. Their confederation-alliances have imposed strict demilitarization of the entirety of their border regions ever since, but they still engage in a cold war. The Meritocracy of Pernik is nominally minarchist, in practice oligarchic-plutocratic and controlled primarily by families who were lesser nobility or major guilds in the predecessor state. The Vratsa Citizenry is an idealistic direct/liquid democracy* with socialist tendencies which broke sharply from the predecessor's power structures. Also depicted is Ohridski Independent, a university-microstate which stayed out of the war and is neutral ground; the protagonists first met while both students attending the university. The two viewpoint characters trade off perspective, and each switch is made when they meet face to face, whether in the DMZ, in the university's grounds, or another neutral country. The Perniki is the daughter of an aristocratic family who transitioned into the capitalist class smoothly, but are old-fashioned and sideline her due to lingering sexism; she manages an internal affairs bureau and a private security firm for her family. She is not particularly loyal to her country but is attached to the privileges of wealth and status. The Vratsan is also from an old family, but is a committed partisan for the democratic ideals of his country. He is a known field agent, though his service record is classified; comments from his counterpart imply that she has seen the sealed record anyway, and that he is the most highly decorated agent they have.

The action chapters cover espionage, sabotage, and assassinations; the Vratsan side shows him committing them personally, while the Perniki chapters show her making arrangements for others to act or actively directing response when part of her agency is targeted. The meetings involve a lot of trading barbed comments and hinting at knowledge of each other's actions, frequently joking about offers to defect, but also reminiscing about their history at school and romantically-charged comments about each other's competence and accomplishments. There is also a varying degree of implication that they're having sex off-screen, ranging from "meeting for coffee in the afternoon, next chapter picks up leaving town in the morning" to "leaves their hotel room keys under the dinner check when they leave the table"; nothing is shown on-screen. The last few chapters break from the pattern by having a female-lead portion end when she is in the direct line of fire from an unexpected operation she thinks is the male lead - the remainder of the book interleaves the two viewpoints as she acts personally against a follow-up attack, and both protagonists realize they're possibly going to kill their counterpart by morning. She realizes the intended target is a corrupt wing of her family's private police, and when his actions start to blare a meeting of grossly corrupt silencing of whistle-blowers, she hesitates for long enough to lose control, and while she coordinates 'damage control', she's internally conflicted about whether she regrets failing or not. The final meeting has the male lead arrive at her personal residence; she congratulates him on successfully inciting a run on the bank that is the keystone of her family's holdings, removing most of their wealth and power. He accepts it half-heartedly and states he knows she was almost in a position to prevent it, and says that he's unsure whether he wants to apologize for putting her on the spot. She's non-committal, but with some heat declares that she's not going to keep the house much longer, with the power shifting as much as it is. He kisses her hand**, hands her a manila folder, and leaves. She opens it and finds a passport and set of documents tailored for her, along with tickets and itinerary for travel to a neutral country and a destination she recognizes as the barony of a cousin branch of the male lead's family, who've maintained their title and holdings. A three-sentence epilogue describes a view from a window of the barony's seat, the warmth of a fire in the room, and a bedside table next to the window, where the passport rests on top of a rumpled blouse and skirt.

*The translator notes that this is a very flattering and somewhat anachronistic depiction of democracy for the time period; the sophistication of its mechanisms are unrealistic, as liquid democracy wasn't tried at this scale for another half-century, and most democracy in the time period was substantially more corrupt and dysfunctional, exclusionary, or both, than is seen here. The author is an openly-opinionated ideologue for liquid democracy and other direct-democracy-family forms of government. However, it was well-researched; though the succession crisis and particulars of the secession are fiction, Ohridski Independent is directly based on a real historical university in the region, and like several other universities, student government at the time is one of the known examples of small-scale attempts at liquid democracy.
**More overtly/standardly romantic than anything they have done on-screen at any earlier point.