Preface

Rando provided editing assistance. Thank you, Rando. I’ve reinserted some typos and such just to keep the purists entertained. Have fun.

1. Historical Accuracy While a large degree of historical accuracy has been purposely maintained, narrative utilities take precedence. Referenced historical events, organizational entities, and characters should be understood as fictional. As such, they may be foreshortened, combined, recast in time or place, or otherwise altered for plot development. Characterizations may likewise be subject to interpretation, distortion, or misattribution.

2. Cultural References The American English vocabulary used in dialogue and internal discourse has, as much as possible, been made accurate to the depicted cultural periods through historical n-gram analysis and published research. Consequently, outdated cultural references, words, and phrases may be used, including racial, ethnic, sexual preference, and gender slurs.

3. Non English Usage & Representation Certain accent, diacritic, and non-standard punctuation marks have been removed from translations of non-English words and phrases to make them more accessible to the casual reader and to reduce code transposition errors in transfers to and between digital text-publishing systems.

4. Content Advisory May contain depictions of graphic violence, including homicide, sexual assault, child abuse, and animal cruelty with attendant circumstances in keeping with the context of the setting’s period and culture.