Now not many of you readers would be aware of this fact but Nerdcenaries was originally a periodical back in the 19th century. It was created by a man named Louis Rouals. The periodical entitled “Nerdcenaries: A Confastion Of Gapping Maws And The Abysses” never really took off but was none the less continued for about 30 years ending in 1846 after Rouals was consumed by a bear and as a result lost his entire readership.
Thanks to obsessive collectors, family trees and other such ephemera though, the hansom and single (ladies…) heir to the Nerdcenaries fortune, Augustus Crosk was able to collect all of the remaining prior issues of the series and then secure a copyright and trademark for the name Nerdcenaries once more.
The original periodical focused primarily on the delusional rantings of Rouals who at the time had become highly schizophrenic but due to his vast (for the area) fortune and the fact that he owned the local lumber mill, he was viewed as eccentric instead. He wrote commonly of giant black portals that lay within the souls of people which made them do “darke deeds” or evil and that those who succumbed to the portals would become creators of more evil. Rouals was so convinced that these portals existed that he would personally examine every potential employee for these portals before they would be allowed to work for him.
Eventually Rouals began accepting writing contributions including “wrytengs ef the sexeul nayturh” and off-color anti-Spaniard humor. The disturbing part of this was the fact that Rouals himself continued to be the only contributor to the periodical despite there being a staff of 18 contributors. As it turns out he had started writing under vastly different identities including Hakim the Muslym, Bao-Que the Yellow Mayn and Alberto Vincente the Gayme Reviewer, all of whom had different writing styles and opinions. Hakim for example was militantly against the existence of any female life be it human or otherwise while 4 other identities were incredibly militant feminists.
As previously mentioned, Rouals was killed by a bear in 1846 and was found to have not “just gone wandering to find the Indians” as the local paper had reported. According to the paper, Rouals was attempting to subscribe more readers to the paper and thought the bear was educated enough to appreciate his paper. It was not.
With the death of Rouals, the papers were collected first as a curiosity and then was worshiped as a religious artifact by a group of Spanish priests who saw it as a guide of how to live and shape the world. The priests who called themselves members of the Rouals Cross treated the collection as the Ultimate Testament. Under the ownership of the Spaniards, 2 dozen copies of the daily paper were printed and distributed. Unfortunately all completed collections of the paper were lost as the priests were meanwhile excommunicated and killed for heresy.
What we now know about the paper is all purely fiction as is the life and existence of Rouals as well as his descendent Crosk. We just like screwing with you.
But now that the past of the magazine has been explained we are invited to look into the future, to gaze into the new abyss and face the beast that lies within while carrying a screwdriver and a sense of humor.
– Luke Herr
Chief Editor, Nerdcenaires 2011
