“The Bog King’s Daughter” by Robin Furth is a perfect-bound chapbook published exclusively for Brian James Freeman’s Patreon supporters in June 2026 as part of Lividian Story Box: Volume One. This Limited Edition one-time printing features a full-color front cover, inside cover, and interior illustrations by François Vaillancourt.

Excerpt from the Chapbook:
You can stop pounding on the door now. Sorry, but I was in the cellar and didn’t know that you were standing out here in the rain. Well what did you expect, turning up at the home of an old recluse like me? And you, the star student of the very man who forced me out of my job at the university!

Yes, you can come in. I’ll let you, even though you’re dragging half of the bog over my threshold. I must say, I was more than a little surprised when you showed up at the village pub to talk to me, but I thought even you would have more sense than to try to follow me home. No one in her right mind traverses the bog by foot after dark, and on tonight of all nights! There are at least a dozen sinkholes between the edge of the village and my cabin. Didn’t they tell you that at the pub? And then you almost got caught in one, didn’t you?

Those holes are like quicksand. You think you’re putting your foot on solid ground, but then when you shift your weight forward, down you go—neck-deep in silt and mud. And you, all alone, with no one to rescue you. You were awfully lucky.

You’ll have to take off those wet clothes. I can lend you some of mine. They won’t fit—even in my old age I’m built like an Amazon—but at least they’ll be dry. What a state you’re in! In fact, I’d say that you’re as filthy as the sacrificial corpses that my father used to haul out of the bog.

No, it’s not a very flattering comparison, but you should see yourself. If I were a superstitious person, I’d swear that you’d died in that sinkhole and now it’s your ghost that’s come to talk to me. Sorry dear, but it’s true. It’s the turning of the year after all, and according to local legend, tonight the Bog King wakes, bringing with him his retinue of the drowned.

Call me foolish, but in this at least I believe what the villagers say. On Van’Nog our ghosts crowd close, brought to the surface of the waters by the waking of the Bog King. It’s the time to pay old debts, but it is also the night when the old year dies and the new one is yet to be born from the mud. It is the night of shifting destinies, because the veil between worlds wavers and is as insubstantial as the poisonous, weedy slime that grows over the bog’s drowning holes.

Publication Format:
This Patreon supporter exclusive chapbook is perfect bound, printed entirely in full-color, and signed by Robin Furth and François Vaillancourt. Limited to a print run of 600 copies. Shipped with the other chapbooks in Lividian Story Box: Volume One.