Interesting project, and a very fun story. Authors make up back stories to go with various knickknacks. Then the objects are sold. Apparently the point is to figure out whether the stories add value to the objects.

This is my favorite of the stories I've read.

Quoted: This is an icon of the fourteenth-century saint Vralkomir of Dnobst, the patron saint of extremely fast dancing.

Quoted: In the autumn of 1347, in response to a perceived slight from a Dnobstian maiden, the recently enthroned Tsar Nÿrdrag the Irascible (also known as “The Cowbird Tsar,” a Scandinavian foundling whom the previous Tsar and Tsarina unknowingly raised as their own) issued an edict banning fire in Dnobst.