QUARCOXA 1

This 40-page zine introduces the Republic of Quarcoxa in the year 197X, how to create Researchers and form Study Groups, and a sampling of uncanny Projects to pursue and inspire. 

Somewhere near the equator, on the twilight edge of the world, squats the Republic of Quarcoxa (car-COH-sha). 

Founded in the 16^th century as a laboratory-prison for uncanny pursuits, centuries of bizarre social experiments and occult revolutionism has birthed the farsa (charade), fascinating academics and intriguing the powerful the world over. It’s said no place conceals a secret like the mirror-house religion of the Quarcoxans—for centuries a veritable Swiss bank of forbidden knowledge.

Quarcoxa enters the 1970s as a nominal democracy under the heel of enigmatic Air Force general Arquímedes Fulco. Newly open to the wider world, the Republic is rapidly modernizing. Through state infrastructure projects, experimental technology, and population control, Fulco’s Serene National Party attempts to forge a new Quarcoxa at odds with its fraught past.

In this country, the mystic trial is the cultural trope par excellence. A vivid idiom passed down from the colonial era is “to make your coffin from your library shelves”—in Quarcoxa, the search for wisdom is an armed pilgrimage.