To Outlive the Gods, End of Time, Beneath Broken Earth

A few howls of the damned for your listening pleasure:

My Dying Bride, "To Outlive the Gods"

Lacuna Coil, "End of Time"

Paradise Lost, "Beneath Broken Earth"

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

Episode 45: The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

Kai Ashante Wilson's 2015 novel The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps establishes a new and vibrant fantasy world that draws inspiration from African culture. This sword and sorcery tale depicts the journey of Demane, a gifted healer and fighter who hides numerous secrets, as he helps guard a caravan against enemies of the mortal and supernatural varieties.

What are the similarities and differences to traditional fantasy tropes found in this book? How is language and dialog deployed to depict its characters? Are there limitations to shared warrior brotherhood? Kate and Jack explore all these questions and more in the latest episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

The Cleric and the Cannibals

Photo by Ines Alvarez Fdoz at Unsplash

As Khamad, Sable, and Casimir rode north, they talked about their motives. "Why are you after my brother?" Khamad asked Sable. She grinned and tapped her eye patch. "He owes me for this with some interest besides," she said. She turned to Casimir, "And you? Why are you travelling with us? There's a good chance we're going to die in this godsforsaken wilderness."

Casimir turned his eyes skyward, as if searching the heavens for an answer. After a few moments he said, "I'm being tested. I've been tasked with finding something. I already nearly failed when I got captured by those bandits. This is a second chance for me. Probably won't get another." Cryptic, but it was an answer of sorts.

Further north, in the realm of Lamashtu, it began to snow. They considered ditching the wagon they had looted from the bandits, as it kept getting stuck in the rough terrain, but Casimir insisted it would come in handy later on down the road, so he made every effort to keep the wheels out of ruts.

Cresting a hill, they saw a terrible thing.

A woman, her blonde hair braided and coiled around her round face, was running from half a dozen men and women clad in ragged, filthy furs. Each of them bore a harpoon.

Unwilling to let the woman be run down, Sable and Khamad rode to her defense while Casimir unslung his musket and begin to take shots at the savages. Sable stove into the unrushing barbarians like a cavalry officer. Khamad summoned fire from the ether, letting it dance upon these infidels.

The running woman, as it transpired, was not without fire of her own. Now that she was not absolutely outnumbered, she turned and faced her pursuers. Fingering a wooden rosary, she chanted words in the holy language of the saintly blood, calling radiant fire down upon the fur-clad barbarians. They screamed and roared, but still they came out.

Casimir's shots rang out, sending a few of them to the Abyss. Sable and Khamad fought back-to-back, holding their new foes at bay. 

The newcomer again touched her rosary. Her eyes when white and inhuman. She rose from the earth on spectral wings. She emitted an aura of unkind death, rotting flesh on the bone.

When the battle was over, Casimir came running down the hill while Sable and Khamad regarded the woman with a mixture of horror and wonder. "Who were those beasts, and who are you?" Casimir asked.

"Those are Helvinter cultists," she said. "To advance in their cult, they need to hunt, kill, and cannibalize their victims to please their fell mistress."

"You're a priest of the Church of Saintly Blood, aren't you?" Khamad asked.

She tucked her rosary away.

"Yes, or...something like that. My name is Devanya. I serve Saint Mairwen and Azrafina, the Angel of Death."

"Why would a living saint be in vampire-blighted Lamashtu?" Sable asked.

"I was heading to the court of the Queen. Someone there has an relic sacred to Mairwen. I mean to recover it."

Sable and Khamad exchanged glances. "We're headed to Castle Siebenhurst as well. Shit, I'll bring the wagon around, you'll ride with us," Casimir said.

It wasn't so much an offer as it was a cold, hard fact.

* * *

Previous Adventures
Losing a Fight in a Frontier Tavern

Mexican Horror Comics, Ghost Hunting Technology, New Decadence

A Brief History of Mexican Horror Comics
- Silvia Moreno Garcia, Tor

The Broken Technology of Ghost Hunting
- Colin Dickey, The Atlantic

New Decadence or Decadent Socialism?: James Pate Interviews Paul Cunningham
- ActionBooks

Character Concept Art by Behnam Green

I love these character concept pieces by Behnam Green. 

Losing a Fight in a Frontier Tavern

Photo by Juliane Liebermann at Unsplash

In a lonely wayside inn on Krevborna's unruly Frontier, a lone blood mage from Ustalecht asks the wrong questions of the assorted mercenaries and ruffians gathered within. He thought he could rely on threats and a show of minor sorcery to get the information he wanted.

But he was wrong. 

The things they say about Krevbornites in his home country--that they are cowards raised on soft bread dipped in milk--prove not be to true. The men and women gathered in the inn don't respond well to threats, and they've seen worse than than the paltry little dance of magic he can command on a whim. The beat the blood mage bloody, giving him the kind of thrashing he thought he had left behind when he deserted the Empire's army.

He is thrown out of the inn, face first, into a puddle of mud. It rains, icy and bitter, but he barely notices. Khamad has had worse days.

Consciousness comes and goes, but Khamad becomes aware that a woman is staring down at him from her one good eye as she sits atop a horse. The woman is slight; underneath the bulk of her oilskin coat, she is dressed in finery that is ill-suited to the Frontier. Her clothes, though, are boyish rather than feminine. A rakish hat kept the water off her hair. She wore an eye patch, and a rapier was slung at her belt. In her gloved hand she held the reins of a second horse.

"I will help you fight your secret war," she said. 

Khamad picked himself up and mounted the second horse. They rode.

The woman's name, or so she claimed, was Sable. As they camped in a cave, Khamad tried to explain himself. About his brother, a fellow blood mage from Ustalecht, who had discovered magic potent enough to destroy Krevborna. About how he had seen enough devastation. About how even though his people would dearly love to have Krevborna ravaged, swept clean, made fit to join the Empire, he could not allow it to happen. Not even in the land of his enemies. He was sick of blood.

Sable snorted. "There's more blood yet to come. Rivers of it, miles of it." 

How could she know? She had dreamed of it. Dreams that worried her to the quick, made her abandon a life of debauchery and leisure to seek out a lone blood mage from Ustalecht in the exact place her dream had told her he would be. They got roaringly drunk.

Drunk enough not to hear the approach of bandits until it was too late. Too late for the bandits, that is. The rapier Sable wore was not for show; when it was in her hand, all frivolity disappeared and was replaced with an enthusiastic blood lust. Khamad did not limit himself to pretty magical tricks; the bandit faced fire and lightning. 

The bodies were duly looted. The bandits' wagon was duly looted, but the greatest treasure they were carrying was an abductee--a swordsman named Casimir who had been waylaid days before. Casimir was given his freedom and agreed to travel with them until they reached the next civilized town or village.

Both Khamad and Sable grinned. It would be a long time until they hit a place that could rightfully be called civilized.

Victorian Mystery and Illusion, Bulwer-Lytton, Why the Emma Movie is So Horny

The Victorian theatrical world of mystery and illusion
- Essie Fox, Historia

An Appreciation of Lord Bulwer-Lytton
- Jess Nevins, io9

Why Autumn de Wilde’s new Emma movie is so horny
- Constance Grady, Vox