March 15, 2012. In the fourth ward of a locked psychiatric facility, Dionysus measures time by med rounds, fluorescent lights, and the same arguments looping in the dayroom. His file says “domestic terrorist” after an ‘incident’ at a mall. On the unit with him are Johny, sharp-eyed and volatile, and Jesus, brilliant and withdrawn, barely willing to speak.

But on a day that should have been identical to the last, something arrives that doesn’t fit the schedule…

Expect a new episode every week, with an original soundtrack. Listen to the Podcast, or check out the album Cut the Sky’s Throat.

Some Still Despair In A Prozac Nation was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hard to believe 2025 is basically over, isn’t it?

I’ve spent the past year building two parallel tracks: The Fallen Cycle on the fiction/transmedia side, and Modern Mythology on the “sharing the craft” RPG/design side. They overlap in the ways you’d expect (genre as procedure; system as narrative constraint; myth as a machine you can run), but they ship as different artifacts.

Everything below is made by small teams, on small budgets, in stolen hours. Even with the judicious and limited use of neural nets, ML and LLMs to help scale a bootstrapped project, this has meant really digging in and committing half of each week to these projects (3–4 days/week for 54 weeks).

The rest of my time has been spent doing content writing and commissions for income.

That’s the reality. Much of the focus has been on developing content and releasing it for free, to try to build out from the past decade of world-building and internal development.

It also means 2026 will be the year we decide what gets scaled — and what gets cut.

The Fallen Cycle Mythos (fiction podcast): Cycle 2 begins in 2026

2025 highlight: we wrapped Cycle 1: Tales From When I Had A Face and closed that arc with Season 4, Episode 4: “Epilogue”.

If you haven’t started the show yet, the best linear entry point is still Cycle 1, which serialized Tales From When I Had A Face. (Season 1–4).

2026 plan: Season 5 and 6 run next year and shift into Cycle 2: Party At The World’s End (the 2014 novel, adapted as audio). The show will push even harder on immersion: a fully produced soundtrack, including the music of the in-world band Babylon — fronted by Lilith.

I would even consider the podcast edition of this book a more definitive version than the original book release, mostly because I have no intention of moving backwards and reprising subsequent editions rather than moving forward on to the next story in the Cycle. Even if that weren’t the case, I think this year’s programming is going to be a hell of a ride, and I hope some of you come along for it.

Links:

• Listen / start here: The Fallen Cycle Mythos podcast
• Cycle 2 landing page (forthcoming): Party At The World’s End
• Cycle 1: Tales From When I Had A Face
• Order Tales From When I Had A Face B&W print edition.

Options for subscribing through podcast apps are on the page, or you can listen on the website directly.

BLACKOUT: Terminal Ghosts (novel): in production now

BLACKOUT: Terminal Ghosts is in active production — cyber-noir + mythpunk + slow-burn supernatural horror novel, set in Hong Kong, 2054, with a crew of freelancers stumbling into a conspiracy that ties corporate AI to the dreams of long-dead gods. (Based on the first RPG I explicitly ran in the Fallen Cycle Mythos between 2020–21).

The target is to have it finished (rewrites) and entering editorial by the end of 2026. The full manuscript draft is already complete weighing in at 215k words.

Link:

• BLACKOUT: Terminal Ghosts

Modern Mythology (podcast): closing out year one

Modern Mythology is hitting its one-year mark with 20 episodes that mix dialogue, actual-play, and interviews — using specific games as test rigs for bigger questions: genre constraints, tropes as repeatable procedures, system incentives, table culture, and what different formats demand from story. The show launched with Episode 1 on Jan 13, 2025, and Episode 20 posted Dec 22, 2025.

In year one we did a first pass through horror and sci-fi, and we’re moving into fantasy next. Not as a type of taxonomy or all-inclusive list, but as a working set of lenses. This follows from the show premise that our actualplay is meant to expose how we engage with the system oftentimes in our first time playing with it, and how that engagement effects the narrative outcome.

I intend to run some more long-form narrative actual-play campaigns that are a little more demonstrative of my normal style of GMing, (perhaps starting with the second season of The Witchhunters on its own cast), but that is not the objective here.

Links:

• Listen / all episodes: Modern Mythology podcast

Options for subscribing through podcast apps are on the page, or you can listen on the website directly.

Modern Mythology writing: essays + the Rules in Practice series

In 2025 I also started building out the written side of Modern Mythology, anchored by Rules in Practice (now four installments), a history-through-practice approach to how RPGs actually get played — and how cultures of play reshape what “the rules” even mean. Parts 1–4 ran June → November 2025.

Recent pieces I’m proud of:

• Rules in Practice Series
• Nosferatu as folklore
• Alien: Earth & RPG design — corporate horror that plays
• Stranger Things as actual play: table logic, not plot logic (posted Dec 27, 2025)

Next up (already in the pipe): a piece on how tropes / archetypes can function as “story engines” — not cardboard cut-outs, but repeatable generators you can actually run at the table (or in fiction), with variation as the point.

Browse everything:

• Modern Mythology articles index

If you want to keep these alive in 2026

If you listen, read, share, review — thank you! If you want to materially support the work (and increase the odds that 2027 is growth instead of triage), Patreon is always appreciated. But our main focus this year is developing a more substantial listener and reader base, and so sharing directly with friends and subscribing yourself are the most direct approach for now.

• Support: Patreon — The Fallen Cycle Mythos
• Central hub / projects page: James Curcio: Artist / Author

What Got Built in Stolen Hours during 2025 (and What Comes Next in 2026) was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hi everyone,

It’s been a busy few months. If you haven’t checked in since mid-summer, here is a roundup of the recent articles, podcast episodes, and production updates I’ve rolled out since July…

Modern Mythology: The RPG Pivot

We are continuing our deep dive into the history and theory of RPGs, exploring the “why” behind the games we play, and maybe a bit of the “how.”

The “Rules in Practice” Series

• Just Released — Part 4: “System Does Matter” Our latest installment explores The Forge, GNS Theory, and the Story Games revolution that challenged the industry in the 2000s.
• Part 3: The “Trad” Era Released earlier this fall, examining the rise of AD&D, World of Darkness, and the culture of the “Golden Rule.”

Media & Applied Theory

• Alien: Earth & RPG Design: A look at how the Alien franchise uses corporate incentives to drive horror, and how to bring that “bad decision” logic to your table.
• Nosferatu as Folklore: Analyzing Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu not just as a remake, but as a study in how folklore thrives on variation and repetition.

Modern Mythology Podcast New episodes exploring diverse systems and play styles:

• Ep. 19 (Nov): Troupe Style Play
• Ep. 18 (Oct): Freemarket
• Ep. 17 (Oct): Trinity Storypath
• Ep. 16 (Aug): CBR+PNK Actual Play
• Ep. 15 (Aug): Blank Page or Blueprint

The Fallen Cycle: Audio Dramas & Actual Plays

Big things are moving in the mythos.

The Fallen Cycle Podcast

A serialized audio-fiction edition of select Fallen Cycle Mythos stories.

• Now Playing: Season 4 is live! If you haven’t caught up, now is the perfect time to dive back into the narrative.
• Coming Soon: We are officially entering production on the audio adaptation of “Party At The World’s End” (2014). This will be the focus of our next season, bringing the novel’s mythpunk apocalypse to life with a full original soundtrack. I hope to see that ready to roll out in 2026.

The Witch-Hunters Campaign

• We are currently approaching the thrilling conclusion of Season 2 of our internal Witch-hunters campaign.
• We’re recording everything this season and are slated to release the entire saga as an Actual Play podcast series in 2026. Watch this space or on the Fallen Cycle site for teasers.

James Curcio: Recent Releases & Works in Progress

The Girl Who Lost Her Tears Available now! I provided the illustrations for this new full-color novella by Tash Cox. Set in a desert world where a single rainfall might save the Cuala people, a young girl surrenders her tears to call the storm and journeys into a shifting dreamscape of dunes and magic.

BLACKOUT: Terminal Ghosts (WIP) I’m currently drafting this major new novel. Set in a speculative 2050s Hong Kong, it’s (currently) a 210,000-word supernatural cyber-noir exploring climate shifts, layered urban infrastructure, and the ghosts that haunt the machine. This is based on the first RPG I ran in the Fallen Cycle Mythos 2020–21.

Read more about the project here.

New Essays

• “Business as Usual Leads to Catastrophe” (Aug 28): A reframe on time, thresholds, and the dangers of unplanned rapid change.

You can find all these articles and episodes at ModernMythology.net, listen to the audio drama, check out past releases and associated media at FallenCycle.com, and catch up on my latest work at JamesCurcio.com.

Thanks for reading and listening!

Updates: Story Games Revolution, New Audio Dramas & Current Releases was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Story About the Ends of Worlds, and the Beginning of Meaning…

On Ayta’s seventh birthday, there came a knock on the door, and her namesake stood before her. Gran Ayta. Once a thing of myth, descended from legends. Now she seemed just a stooped old woman, but appearances can be deceiving.

The last episodes of Tales From When I Had A Face are queued and scheduled, closing out Cycle 1 of The Fallen Cycle Mythos a year and a month after the first drop with season 4. If you’ve been waiting to binge, start at Episode 1 and let it run in order — Summer (1), Fall (2), Winter (3), and Spring (4). Listen on the site or your usual player. Platform links live on the podcast page.

For those who are up to date, no spoilers: the final stretch pivots into Nyssa’s account and closes the loop opened through the previous three seasons.

6–7 hours runtime or so is a lot of soundtrack to produce, but David Bessell really helped me keep it intentional rather than obligatory. His synth work anchors much of this arc’s sound. I selected backing tracks and materials from previous albums I’ve produced, then mixed and produced the soundtrack and the spoken word (generated and processed in post). Much of the synth texture you hear comes from his palette.

Tales was an illustrated novel first — 100+ images across the book. Credits and a preview live on the site, and there’s a B&W edition if you prefer book-first (Amazon). There are a very limited number of the limited editions (hardcover full-color) produced for the Kickstarter; contact me directly if you are interested in one.

If you’re new start at Episode 1 and listen straight through at your leisure. The podcast page has links to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, and RSS, so you can use whatever player you actually like.

Up next:
Party at the World’s End (Cycle 2) will begin with season 5.

PATWE is going to be a bit of a tone shift, while staying in the same mythos and near the same timeline — Tales takes place between 2001–2008 whereas PATWE is largely 2010–2012.

In a universe very close to our own, it tracks Lilith and her band of miscreants as they stumble from escaped convicts to a different kind of stardom. The higher they climb (literally and figuratively) the more the state notices: counter-terrorism units in pursuit, a country coming apart at the seams, and a band of reality pranksters becoming either a public symbol of death and rebirth or a footnote in history… depending who you ask. (Read more on the PATWE page).

It’s faster, louder, and frankly… very situated in the vibe of the early 2010s. It’s also quite a bit funnier than Tales, as we move away from the somber melancholy of Ayta’s voice, and the bombastic menace of Gran’s. Nyssa we may hear from again, someday. The story for the other two is at its end. (I think).

It’s been an interesting experiment, and I’m fairly happy with how it came out. Of course there are always things you’d change pretty much as soon as you release a project. I’ve learned that’s just how it works. Roll those things into the next project. Thank you for listening, sharing, and sending notes.

See you at the World’s End.

From the Tree of Names to the End of the World was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Anyway… time, it do be passing. Here’s what I’ve been up to in my bubble…

I’ve been hard at work with the others involved in making that pivot with Modern Mythology towards collaborative storytelling and RPGs, with the podcast currently at 13 episodes released, and starting an ongoing series of written articles called “Rules in Practice” to help establish context both in terms of the history of table-top roleplaying and also some of the key models and discussion points that we keep circumambulating in our live discussions.

I’ve got 8 articles drafted for that series so far, though they all need a bit of work before release.

(It’ll come as no surprise to the listeners of the podcast that while the episodes are lightly edited, so you don’t have to hear the pauses and multiple repeat ums and ahs especially during the Actualplay sessions, the format is unscripted.)

Meanwhile, my illustration process for The Girl Who Lost Her Tears continues. I’ve spent several months now developing concept, explored various directions for both the diegetic (“in-world” clothing, architecture, etc) and illustrative styles I’ll be using, and I think I’m approaching the point where I can jump into painting. We are trying to hit an autumn release at least for an early edition, so it’s going to be a massive crunch, probably several hundred hours of work in a month and a half. Pray for me.

Of course, by that time I also intend to be really getting into the pre-production process for the 5th-6th seasons of the Fallen Cycle podcast, which will be the audio edition of Party At The World’s End. It’ll be fun going back to a story I wrote some 15 years ago now. I’ll be taking a somewhat different approach to the soundtrack for these, matching the style change for that material… more collaborators, and likely more post-production on my part.

Pre-production for that will have to share space with post-production for season 4 so we can complete the audio version of Tales From When I Had A Face.

I’m mostly in a holding pattern on that waiting for time to free up for David Bessell, my primary musical collaborator on that one. As you can tell it’s not as if I’m at a lack for other things to do in the meantime. My hope is to be rolling out season 4 by sometime in August, we will see…

As a last piece for the Fallen Cycle on my plate, I have “untitled cyberpunk novel project” in a drawer right now (the RPG it is based on was “BLACKOUT 2054: Awakening” but I doubt that’ll be the title of the book).

So, the players from that game have a couple months to tinker with my draft before I go back to hitting it up in the fall or winter. 2 of the 3 Acts are at least in passable form, the third is well outlined but I haven’t had the time and energy to start the drafting process on that.

This book almost certainly be in subsequent seasons of the Fallen Cycle podcast as well as released in paperback. As with my other books in this series, I’ll probably query a bunch of publishers in hopes of broader distribution and then ultimately just release it myself on Amazon rather than have it sit on a shelf for the rest of eternity.

The Witch-hunters RPG is in its second season, and a potentially exciting note on that: I’ve been recording our sessions this season, so there’s a fair possibility that at some point in the future I’ll be able to share the live sessions with you all.

There are literally hundreds of pages of lore developed over the course of the first season (30 sessions), so no lack of setting material. As of writing this Season 2 has had 4 sessions. I’m shooting for a bit tighter of a run with this one so expect to be moving towards wrapping it up somewhere in the session 12–18 range. But yeah… we’ll see.

Let’s see… what else?

On the back burner, I’m hoping to get some time in editing and doing concept art for a series of Trinity RPG adventures based in the Storypath system (RPGs) with Scott, one of the co-host and collaborators on Modern Mythology.

I’ve also been discussing jumping into an untitled music project with a friend and collaborator from days of yore in fall. If so that’ll mean about a month or two of getting my callouses back (bass + guitar) and getting some instruments repaired, as it’s been about two years since I’ve touched any of them. Been too busy on this other stuff. We’ll see… it might be fun to do something musical that’s unconnected to everything else I’m working on, but this one is still fairly tentative.

The Tomorrow’s Forgotten Relics EP had a little bit of juice in streaming the first month (4–5k, nothing phenomenal) and then vanished quietly into the void, which left a bit of a sour note in terms of the prospects for studio projects these days. But the fact is my time and health simply aren’t at a place that I can entertain the thought of touring with a live band anymore. I’m afraid those short-lived days are likely behind me.

So, yeah. I fully expect to take a breath, blink and look up and discover that it is now winter 2025. By then, more will be complete, and hopefully it’ll find its audience.

I find the idea of creating art and stories with the intention of chasing an audience pretty reprehensible, it’s contrary to the whole enterprise top to bottom — all you can do is trust that what speaks to you will speak to other people. Lose that, and you yourself are lost.

But for all that, we don’t do this work to hear ourselves. Once its done and out in the world, it belongs to the world… or to no one. My time with it will be done, I’ll be on to the next things.

Time flies when you’re juggling multiple projects and the country around you is turning into a… was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I received an email from Medium recently that explained why I’ve not been seeing almost any opens on recent mail-list updates. They’ve been only sharing them with those addresses that both have a Medium account and have been to their site recently.

Which is pretty bonkers, but supposedly they’re changing that policy now. So here is an update with some of what we’ve been hard at work at these past few months… Hopefully it makes it through…

Podcasts

The Fallen Cycle Mythos fiction podcast

Firstly, we’ve wrapped up the 3rd season of The Fallen Cycle Mythos podcast this week. It’s a short season, but I wanted to stick to the format of the book the material is taken from (Tales From When I Had A Face), and the final installment is essentially a double episode.

As with my other podcasts, you can find this on most podcasting services, as well as downloading it or streaming it directly from our site.

We will begin Season 4 by the summer, which will conclude Cycle 1, making this a great time to catch up on storytime.

Each Cycle in the Fallen Cycle Mythos is sequential and should be listened to in order. However, when we finally make it to the second Cycle (Party At The World’s End) or subsequent ones in 2026, you can skip ahead to them and then go back, if you prefer.

The Book Edition of Tales From When I Had A Face is Available

Tales From When I Had A Face B&W edition. Still fully illustrated. $20 on Amazon. On Ayta’s seventh birthday, there came a knock on the door, and her namesake stood before her. Gran Ayta. Once a thing of myth, descended from legends. Now she seemed just a stooped old woman, but appearances can be deceiving.

The Modern Mythology RPG podcast

We’ve also been keeping very busy on the Modern Mythology RPG podcast. This has been six months now of weekly playthroughs of systems (many of which I hadn’t played before), and discussions about RPG systems and collective storytelling. Some recorded, others not.

Most recently we aired our first interview (with Jason Morningstar), followed by an actual play, and our second interview with Sacha Lightfoot talking about Ronin, which just completed their very successful second crowdfund campaign.

We also ran a discussion episode about Exposition, methods of introducing information in your games. This is the one of several discussion episodes (no actual play) to come about the systems side of things.

Modern Mythology episodes are purely episodic and generally discussion-based, which means you can listen to them in any order.

Narrative Machines Theory Podcast

Finally on the podcast front, I wrapped up the first season of the Narrative Machines theory podcast with our 7th episode, “Remembered and Remembered Again”.

Here I interrogate the tension between the popular belief in linear societal progress and the inherently cyclical nature of revolution. Using the fall of the Berlin Wall as a symbolic entry point, we explore recurring patterns of upheaval, shifting power dynamics, and enduring social inequalities within revolutionary movements. By examining examples such as Egypt’s Arab Spring and China’s Long March, it illustrates how revolutions often produce outcomes that contradict their original ideals.

Although Narrative Machines episodes can stand on their own, each episode builds off of ideas provided in earlier episodes, so it is recommended that you listen through sequentially.

Music

I haven’t had as much time for working on new music material as I’d like to, but I have had time to wrap up and release a studio version of the demo I worked on during the lockdown phase of the pandemic with a number of different musicians. Check it out if you haven’t already…

Lost in Myth doesn’t rewrite so much as reframe the self-titled demo it’s built upon. The skeletal urgency and cosmic weirdness of its origins have evolved into something denser, more volatile — a study in structure and collapse.

Across its nearly twenty minute runtime, the EP builds toward maximalist climaxes that feel both inevitable and unstable, with layers of alternately jagged or atmospheric guitars, muscular rhythms, and spectral melodies pressing against their limits. Art rock as a balancing act — always changing, always tilting toward the void. A soundtrack for a world in flux.

Available now:

• Bandcamp
• Apple Music
• YouTube
• Spotify (two of the tracks were removed from Spotify because someone added it to a playlist that they don’t like, apparently. I haven’t had the time to figure out how to sort that out yet).

Watch:

You Cannot Kill What’s Already Dead, Studio Drums Full Session

Writing

BLACKOUT 2054 (working title)

I have been hard at work on what will be the third full novel in the Fallen Cycle mythos, this one being a bit more of a “genre” book in style and content (cyberpunk), although equally as set in the themes of the other books. Like all Fallen Cycle projects, this is conceived so as to be able to stand on its own, although it certainly benefits from experiencing the other works in the same setting. The first draft is currently at 135k, and following the outline will likely be 150–175k by the time it is complete. This will make it by far the longest story in the setting, not on account of wordiness so much as the sheer amount of plot — a whole lot happens in this story.

Because I’m not even into editorial yet there isn’t much more to share publicly, but here’s a sneak peek of the first scene:

The noodle shop was barely a shop at all — just a stall constructed out of shipping flats, wedged between others like it in a crumbling subway tunnel, somewhere deep beneath Hong Kong. Nemo McBride sat at the ‘counter,’ a bowl of noodles balanced precariously in one hand while his chopsticks moved with idle ease in the other.

Vendors argued over salvaged tech, their voices clashing with the hiss of a nearby steam vent, as a slow but steady stream of stragglers came down the tunnel. Some lived topside, some lived down here year-round. The thud of cargo haulers rolled through the corridors like distant thunder. From deeper in the warren came bursts of sound — laughter, a wailing infant, the sharp bark of an argument — flaring and vanishing just as quickly.

He sensed a danger signal in a tense exchange across the tunnel. Unmistakable, that charged stillness before the sky breaks. Two were Rats. The others were hard to place. Wrong kind of posture, too much twitch. Whatever crew they repped, the vibe was all wrong. Unwholesome.

The metacog in him — training he couldn’t shake, no matter how long it’d been since the Incident — still knew how to read a room. He’d feel the storm break moments before the guns came out. Probably.

JiruAI’s face blinked onto the cracked screen of his slate, some Exec’s idea of retro irony. Their stock avatar was one of those stylized celebrity constructs from the late ’20s, back when virtual influencers still tripped the uncanny valley.

JiruAI stuttered, his eyes rendering incorrectly for a moment before re-appearing in their proper location.

All sculpted features and algorithmic kitsch, practically its own genre now. Eno was right, “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature.”

He had Jiru read the attached brief through his comms.

A Heliotrope Virtual operative requires security and transport to get from a safehouse in the Tai Mo Shan region to a nightclub in downtown West Kowloon.

The courier is carrying encrypted data that is valuable to our buyer. Your cut is a % of the transaction to be determined by your performance following the stipulations of our agreement. This data can be used to expose or control a variety of local political officials with mainland ties, so don’t get caught with it by PRC authorities. That is all you need to know. Your job is to help her do her job.

He sighed quietly, slipping into his thoughts as the AI rattled on.

He knew what AI was, better than most. Corporate or rogue, didn’t matter — it was all Bonkers Shit. Hoodoo. Glamour. Neural networks and probabilistic drift? Just Solomonic diagrams with better UX. Magic squares, matrices accessed with code.

Corporate Archons, babbling in Enochian or Synthax — vast and imaginary as any God, unblinking, their silicon skeleton a pentacle encircling, embedding their inhuman dimensions within our own. Neither dead nor alive, spinning our own black mirror biases back at us.

Servitors, minor demons fed from fusion reactors and precious tritium, enslaved to a blind demiurge. What’s a demon but an angel out of place?

Both serve the guy upstairs, problem is there’s nobody home. Most of them don’t think, in the sense of thinking and knowing it. Didn’t need to, the illusion was enough. Rubes want to be fooled. Who, exactly, picks the mark?

Another tram rattled through the subterranean tunnels somewhere over his head, bringing him out of his thoughts and back to his surroundings.

He ran a hand through his thinning hair and realized it had already ceased playing. He scrolled back.

Status: She is currently in hiding after an attempt on her life. Attacker ID unknown. You will be provided her coordinates, a location in the mountainous forests slightly north of Longshenkeng. There are no traditional roads for the last leg of your trip. Be wary of counter-operations.

Payment (3000/) will be delivered upon the successful delivery of information to her point of contact in Kowloon. Location: Meet the other Agents of your Cell in prearranged location 4 in 1 hour (18:00). Danger Level: Low to medium, but proceed with caution.

Their logo briefly played across the screen, a stylized heliotrope flower, and the slogan “Not just diverse — divergent.” Then the screen went dark.

Nemo pocketed the device. He glanced back at the noodle bowl, contemplating what was left, then pushed it aside.

Sounded like the same type of gig he’d been running since ’51 with his Cell. Escort, protect the asset, deliver, get paid. Shenanigans, if present, were minimal. A bit on the mundane-but-dangerous side, maybe. But well within the range of the usual. Tap a corporate server farm disguised as a karaoke lounge. Extract a rogue AI from a vending machine in the Walled City. Deliver a sealed, conspicuously heavy package to a bonsai tree with no further instructions. Some gigs seemed to actually be serving someone’s interests, some of them were just plain bizarre. Fed his paranoia that Heliotrope was all a big psyop. But for who? Why? He couldn’t figure it.

On his own, he’d be worse than useless at tasks like these. But with the Cell? He still had tricks, old sleight-of-mind maneuvers tucked in deep, behind the wear and the worry.

Across the tunnel, the standoff was defusing. The Rat Clan boys weren’t the ones backing down. It was the other group — the twitchy ones Nemo didn’t recognize — who’d peeled off and vanished into the side tunnels. Maybe Hyenaz. That was worth noting. He’d check in on Boulder later.

Later later. Today was shaping up to be a work day. Time to leave the Barrens and head to the office.

Important Updates for 2025 was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Firstly, we’re wrapping up the 3rd season of The Fallen Cycle Mythos podcast this week. It’s a short season admittedly, but I wanted to stick to the format of the book the material is taken from (Tales From When I Had A Face), and the final installment will essentially be a double episode.

As with my other podcasts, you can find this on most podcasting services, as well as downloading it or streaming it directly from our site.

Each Cycle in the Fallen Cycle Mythos is sequential and should be listened to in order. However, when we finally make it to the second and hopefully eventually subsequent Cycles, you can skip ahead to them and then go back, if you prefer.

We’ve been keeping very busy on the Modern Mythology RPG podcast.

Most recently we aired our first interview (with Jason Morningstar), followed by an actual play of the game he is currently crowdfunding.

We also ran a discussion episode about Exposition, methods of introducing information in your games. This is the first of what is likely to be many other pure discussions (no actual play) to come about the systems side of things.

Modern Mythology episodes are purely episodic and generally discussion-based, which means you can listen to them in any order.

Finally, I wrapped up the first season of the Narrative Machines theory podcast with our 7th episode, “Remembered and Remembered Again”.

Here we interrogate the tension between the popular belief in linear societal progress and the inherently cyclical nature of revolution. Using the fall of the Berlin Wall as a symbolic entry point, we explore recurring patterns of upheaval, shifting power dynamics, and enduring social inequalities within revolutionary movements. By examining examples such as Egypt’s Arab Spring and China’s Long March, it illustrates how revolutions often produce outcomes that contradict their original ideals.

Although Narrative Machines episodes can stand on their own, each episode builds off of ideas provided in earlier episodes, so it is recommended that you listen through sequentially.

April Podcasts was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been busy…

Upcoming podcast episodes:

Monday Mar 24 ep 6 of Modern Mythology (rpgs) — we’re shooting for a fast turnaround of an actual play for a currently ongoing Kickstarter. Stay tuned.

Wednesday Mar 26 — ep 7 of the Narrative Machines (theory) podcast. This will be the season finale as it were, on the paradox of revolution. Had to truncate a bunch about the myth of progress to keep it under an hour, I think it’s a really solid episode.

Monday March 31 — episode 3 of season 3 of the Fallen Cycle podcast (fiction), the penultimate episode that begins to tie together the threads that have been developing over the past 3 seasons, and moving towards the completion of Tales From When I Had A Face (Cycle 1) by this summer.

I’m still not at a point where I can really determine if all this work is going to drive towards rebuilding “an audience” and supporting new and better things to come… So yeah, “please subscribe, listen and share”.

Upcoming Podcast Episodes was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Pre-orders have now begun on Bandcamp. $5.

Lost in Myth doesn’t rewrite so much as reframe the self-titled demo it’s built upon. The skeletal urgency and cosmic weirdness of its origins have evolved into something denser, more volatile — a study in structure and collapse.

A distant echo of Bowie’s Blackstar and Outside resonates beneath the surface — an undercurrent of haunted grandeur that never settles into the familiar, emerging through shifting time signatures, elliptical motifs, and alluringly cryptic lyrical phrases. Yet its center of gravity leans heavier — something like Faith No More’s shapeshifting aggression, Mastodon’s seismic weight, or The Mars Volta’s fever-dream pacing flicker through the mix, though never predictably.

Across its nearly 20-minute runtime, the EP builds toward maximalist climaxes that feel both inevitable and unstable, with layers of jagged yet atmospheric guitars, muscular rhythms, and spectral melodies pressing against their limits. Art rock as a balancing act — always changing, always tilting toward the void.

A fitting soundtrack for a world in flux.

Streaming release on all major platforms Feb 1!

Art-rock for End-times was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Now Available, developed in 2024:

• Narrative Machines Podcast: A nonfiction series delving into how myths and narratives shape human perception, identity, and politics. Episode 1, “Foundations,” explores the central role of myth in modern society. Episode 2 will run in January. Listen here.

• The Fallen Cycle Mythos Fiction Podcast: An audio adaptation of select mythos stories, featuring an immersive soundtrack. Forgotten, forgetful gods walk among us. Season 3 will begin in late Winter. Start listening.

• Modern Mythology Story and System Podcast: Launching soon, this podcast explores how narratives and game mechanics influence each other, shaping the outcomes of our role-playing games. We’ll delve into storytelling techniques, game mechanics, and more. Stay tuned at ModernMythology.net.

• Tales From When I Had A Face B&W edition. Still fully illustrated. $20 on Amazon. On Ayta’s seventh birthday, there came a knock on the door, and her namesake stood before her. Gran Ayta. Once a thing of myth, descended from legends. Now she seemed just a stooped old woman, but appearances can be deceiving.

Music Release:

• Tomorrow’s Forgotten Relics EP: My new four-track studio EP, Lost in Myth, is slated for release in Feb. All tracks are professionally mastered, and I’m finalizing the cover art. Expect a release on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. If there’s interest, I may consider a limited CD pressing. Explore the project on Bandcamp.

Upcoming Projects for 2025 and Beyond:

• Genre Novels: I’m aiming to have two novels — one cyberpunk and one fantasy — ready for editorial by the end of 2025. These stories are based on our BLACKOUT 2054 and ongoing Witch-hunters RPG campaigns and are set within the Fallen Cycle universe. If the podcast garners enough following by 2026, these narratives may also be featured there.
• Fallen Cycle RPG Development: Currently on hold at v1.1 of our playtest edition, I’m gaining more experience with various systems before advancing this project to its next stage.
• New Music: I’m hopeful to record new music this year, but with the current slate, we’ll see how things progress.

Your engagement and feedback are invaluable. Whether through listening, reading, or participating in these projects, you play a crucial role in their development. Thank you for being part of this journey.

Here’s to a creative and inspiring 2025. I know some people out there are listening and reading, I’d love to hear from more of you. (And of course, reviews on my work always appreciated!)

Best regards,

James

NYE 2025 was originally published in Modern Mythology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.