Professor Alfred Halembique (pictured above) was, during the first half of the 20 th century, an historian and world-renowned expert in the esoteric field of sigilography, the study of seals (seals on documents, that is, not those on ice floes). He became engrossed in the complicated minutiae of Syldavian history later in his career and he was rare among modern-day scholars for the breadth of knowledge of this overlooked subject. Much of what is discussed in these pages is inspired by Halembique’s distillation of records and events into a coherent synthesis. Halembique delighted in working in the archives of the diocese of Dbrnouk, where the reading room (a large battered table amidst the stacks) had a window opening onto a corner of the town’s market place. Halembique was a notoriously compulsive chain-smoker and he would sometimes indulge himself with a cigarette by aid of the open window. This was, of course, in a day when libraries had windows that opened but lacked fire alarm
News, plans and plots regarding my 18th century Imagi-Nations campaign set in the fictitious nations of Syldavia and Borduria, my variations on a theme of Hergé