Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (2 page)

Adelaide
:
Mouse’s childhood friend from the charterhouse. The girl’s fate is the cause of much torment for Mouse.

Alastair
:
A mysterious figure who acts seemingly in his own interests. He greatly influences certain meetings and events. To all appearances, he is the Watchers’ agent and Mouse’s mentor. He almost certainly, though, serves another power or master.

Beatrice of El
:
Moreth’s pale and ghastly wife. After a glance, a person can tell this ethereal woman is not wholly of this world.

Curtis
:
A young, athletic man with a shameful, criminal past trying to make a better life for himself in Menos. He is taken with Aadore, though will prove himself more than a doting suitor.

Elineth
:
Son of Elissandra.

Elissandra
:
The Mistress of Mysteries. She is an Iron Sage and the proprietress of Menos’s Houses of Mystery—places where a wary master can consult oracles and seek augurs regarding his or her inevitable doom. While she is wicked, she is also bright with love for her children, and she fosters a hidden dream and hope no other Iron Sage would ever be so bold as to consider.

Elsa Brennoch
:
Mother to Aadore and Sean.

Gloriatrix
:
The Iron Queen and ruler of Menos. Gloriatrix single-handedly clawed her way to the top of Menos’s black Crucible after her husband, Gabriel, lost first his right to chair on the Council of the Wise and then his life. Gloriatrix has never remarried and blames her brother, Thackery Thule, for Gabriel’s death. With her family in shambles, power is the only thing to which she clings. Gloriatrix has ambitions far beyond Menos. She would rule the stars themselves if she could.

Iarron (Ian)
:
An abandoned child, unnaturally calm and still, who was discovered by the Brennoch siblings, on Menos’s darkest day—he is a star of hope to them.

Kanatuk
: A tribesman of the Northlands who had been stolen from his home and placed into a lifetime of abhorrent slavery, serving as a vassal to the Broker. Morigan rescues him in Menos.

Lord Augustus Blackmore
:
Lord of Blackforge. A deviant power-monger with grotesque appetites.

Moreth of El
:
Master of the House of El and the Blood Pits of Menos. He traffics in people, gladiators, and death.

Mouse
:
More of a gray soul than a black one, Mouse is a woman without a firm flag planted on the map of morality. She knows well life’s cruelty and how best to avoid it through self-sufficiency and indifference. As a girl, she escaped a rather unfortunate fate, and she has since risen to become a Voice of the Watchers—a shadowbroker of Geadhain. Mouse’s real trial begins when she is thrust into peril with Morigan—at that time a stranger—and Mouse is forced to rethink everything she knows.

Sangloris
:
Elissandra’s husband.

Sean Brennoch
:
Brother to Aadore. Once a soldier of the Ironguard, now a one-legged veteran. Sean wants no pity, however, and is more capable and clever than most other soldiers.

Skar
:
An ugly, ogreish mercenary whose heart is kinder than his looks. Fate sees his path cross with the Brennochs, and to them he will become a sword not for hire but bound to protect them through respect and duty.

Sorren
:
Gloriatrix’s youngest child. Sorren is a nekromancer of incredible power who possesses the restraint and moods of a petulant, spoiled child. He shares a pained past with his (mostly) deceased brother, Vortigern.

Tessariel
:
Daughter of Elissandra.

The Broker
:
All the black rivers of sin in Menos come to one confluence: the Broker. Little is known about this man beyond the terror tales whispered to misbehaving children. The Broker has metal teeth, mad eyes, and a cadre of twisted servants whom he calls sons. He inhabits and controls the Iron City’s underbelly.

The Great Mother
:
Her Faithful are multitudinous. Her elements and the shades of her divinity—Green, White, Blue—are prefixes to her many names.

The Slave
:
An unnamed vassal purchased in the Flesh Markets of Menos. A dangerous creature, more than a man. Although property, he later
became a free man and substitute father to the Lord El. Together, the men traveled into the wilds of Pandemonia on a most dangerous safari.

Vortigern
:
Gloriatrix’s second son. This pitiable soul lives in a state between light and dark and without memory of the errors that brought him to this walking death.

IV: Lands and Landmarks

Alabion
:
The great woodland and the realm of the Sisters Three.

Bainsbury
:
A moderate-size township on the west bank of the Feordhan. Gavin Foss lords over it.

Blackforge
:
A city on the east bank of the Feordhan River. It was once famous for blacksmithing.

Brackenmire
:
The realm outside of Mor’Khul. It is a swampy but pleasant place.

Carthac
:
The City of Waves.

Ceceltoth
:
City of Stone.

Eatoth
:
City of Waterfalls.

Ebon Vale
:
The land around Taroch’s Arm. It has fiefs, farmsteads, and large shale deposits.

Eod
:
The City of Wonders and kingdom of Magnus. Eod is a testament to the advances of technomagik and culture in Geadhain.

Fairfarm
:
The largest rural community in the East. With so many pastures, fields, and farms, this realm produces most of Central Geadhain’s consumable resources.

Heathsholme
:
A small hamlet known for its fine ale.

Intomitath
:
City of Flames.

Iron Valley
:
One of the richest sources of feliron in Geadhain.

Kor’Khul
:
The great sand ocean surrounding Eod. These lands were once thought to be lush and verdant.

Lake Tesh
:
The blue jewel glittering under the willows of Willowholme.

Menos
:
The Iron City. It is hung always in a pall of gloom.

Mor’Khul
:
The green, rolling valleys of Brutus’s realm. They are legendary for their beauty.

Pandemonia
:
The large island continent across the Cthonic Ocean and separated from most of Geadhain’s other landmasses. Three Great Cities of immeasurable technomagikal power serve to bring order to this realm of chaos, a land where topography shifts and changes day by day from tundra to desert to lava field to wastes. Only these three Great Cities stand permanent in Pandemonia’s constant flux.

Plains of Canterbury:
Wide, sparse fields and gullies.

Riverton
:
A bustling, eclectic city of lighthearted criminals and troubadours. The city is found on the eastern shore of the Feordhan River, and it was built from the reconstituted wreckage of old hulls and whatever interesting bits floated down the great river.

Sorsetta
:
In the south and past the Sun King’s lands. This is a city of contemplation and quiet enlightenment.

Southreach
:
A great ancient city built into a cleft in Kor’Khul.

Taroch’s Arm
:
The resting place of a relic of the great warlord Taroch: his arm. The city is also a hub of great trade among all corners of Geadhain.

The Black Grove
:
The forest outside of Blackforge. It leads to the Plains of Canterbury.

Willowholme
:
A village located in Brackenmire and famed for its musicians and anglers.

Zioch
:
The City of Gold and kingdom of Brutus.

V: Miscellaneous Mysteries

Fuilimean
:
The Blood Promise. It is a trading of blood and vows and a spiritual binding between two willing participants. Magnus and Brutus did this first in the oldest ages. Depending on who partakes in the ritual, the results can be extraordinary.

Technomagik
:
A hybrid science that blends raw power—often currents of magik—with mechanical engineering.

The Faithful
:
Worshippers of the Green Mother. They exist in many cultures and forms, and the most sacred and spiritual of their kind, curators of the world’s history known as Keepers, often lead them.

The Watchers
:
The largest network of shadowbrokers in Central Geadhain.

FOREWORD (A RECAP)

Four Feasts till Darkness
is an expansive and complex work—even I lose track of things without my notes! It would be unreasonable, then, to expect perfect recall from my readers. To that end, I set one of my dear editors—Kyla—to scribbling down all the important bits of the story. Here you are: a refresher of the events of Geadhain’s Great War leading up to
Feast of Chaos
.

—Christian

W
hen first entering the world of Geadhain, we encounter a realm of magical smoke and metaphysical mirrors reflecting the darkest and lightest that its inhabitants have to offer. But as the pages of
Feast of Fates
turn, a deeper understanding of this mystical realm emerges, one that parallels the universalisms found in our own very real experiences in this world. It is a world unlike any other, where science and magic form a mysterious force known as technomagik. It is a land borne of a Green Mother earth, but ruled by the wills—both conscious and unconscious—of kings and queens that wreak havoc on their world. But there comes a time where even a mother must teach her children the hard way, even if it pains her. And so
Feast of Fates
sees the start of the Green Mother’s tough love, depriving them of her protection for the anguish they have brought to her with their violence; it is the world’s inhabitants alone who can save themselves.

Our story begins with the weavers of fate themselves, the Three Sisters—Eean, Elemech, and Ealasyd—who make their homes in the forests of Alabion. The Sisters represent life, death, and all its various contortions and permutations in the world. There, they both give birth to, and usher death upon, themselves and the world. With each renewal, they shape the twists and turns of our players’ journeys, for better or worse. They represent destiny’s infinite loop in a twisted sibling rivalry that will determine Geadhain’s future. But even the Sisters of Fate cannot control the rumblings on destiny’s horizon—the harbingers of destruction to come in the stormy and ethereal form of the Black Queen.

The scene shifts to the city of Eod—Geadhain’s cosmopolitan metropolis. Nestled within Kor’Khul’s oceans of sand, it is known as the City of Wonders for its host of technomagikal advancements and a skyline filled with flying carriages ferrying Eod’s cultural and social elite. There we find Morigan, a young woman of character and strength who is traveling toward a destiny that was forged ages before her birth, and one that is intimately entwined in tapestries of the Three Sisters.

Morigan lives a simple life as a handmaiden until her world is thrown into tumult as she is drawn to the literal animal magnetism of Caenith, a wolf-man changeling whose initial gruff appearance belies his ancient origins and unimaginable power. The two are instantly bonded, each of them knowing that their attraction goes well beyond “love at first sight,” and is more akin to having been written in Geadhain’s starry skies. The two cannot deny what has been preordained, and the ripple effect of the Wolf and Fawn’s union (as they come to know each other) as bloodmates begins to be felt throughout Geadhain. Their coming together stirs ancient powers of sight in Morigan, and inspires the beast in Caenith to reclaim its role in his life.

Morigan’s nascent visions are a near-constant reminder that whenever there is joy, sorrow remains but a half step behind. She is witness to waves of destruction and death shadowing the realm, making their impending presence known not only to her but to all of Geadhain. In her mind’s eye, she sees that just as we humans wage war against ourselves and the earth that has borne us all, so, too, does Geadhain face a battle against evil forged in blackness, smelted from the depths of all the worst
the world has to offer. Chief among Morigan’s visions is the emergence from the pitch of the Black Queen.