This blog is a series of fantasy novels in serial form. If you’d like to start at the beginning and work your way through, this post provides a handy list of all the chapters in sequence.
The first volume, Man Raised by Spiders, tells the story of Inglorion’s younger cousin Valentine, who was taken captive during the Xialo Massacre. After a daring and unprecedented escape from slavery in the Underdark, he’s entirely unequipped to live in a peaceful, genteel high elvish city.
- The Sun Has Its Own Scent
- Theates
- The Island
- Further Training
- The Labyrinth
- Tokens
- Who Sent You?
- Death Is Close
- Streams of Cool Air
- A Good Op
- I Couldn’t Turn Back If I Wanted To
- Matters Between Men and Women
- Lessons in Elvish
- Inglorion Returns
- Epic Luck
- The Gallery
- The Carnival
- We See You, Charon
- Flashing Eyes
- Blood for Blood
- You Can’t Be First, But You Could Be Next
- Valentine in the Battle for Liamelia
- A Sense of Imminent Loss
- Xialo
- A Fate Worse Than Death
- Welcome to the Company of Fugitives
- The First Rule of Thug Life
- Twenty Questions
- Valentine Claudius Shelawn Was Born a Citizen of Liamelia
- One Thousand Sunsets
- Aramil Augustus Is Banished
- The Road to Amakir
- Valykria
- Thick as Thieves
- Cactus Always Looks Smooth from a Distance
- Θ {target} {action} Θ
- No Secrets
- How to Keep the Game Going
- It Solves the Problem
- Charon Pallas Proioxis
- Throat Hit
- How Valentine Married the Gunner’s Daughter
- There Can Be No Real Objection
- Desire
- This Lesson Is Free
- The Weight of the Past
- Eralon Amakir, Esq. Gets a Beating
- Tereus Shelawn Was a Brute
- Eyes As Dark As Any Shelawn Could Wish
- Inglorion Atropos Androktasiai, Marquis Theates
- Threats and Promises
- I Love You. I Lost My Temper. I Made Mistakes.
- What Did You Do to Your Hands?
- Honor and Responsibility
- Animals, Not Angels
- Valentine Comes Home
- The So-Called Visible Spectrum
- Heaven’s Just a Block Away
The next volume, The Biography of Inglorion Atropos Androktasiai, follows Inglorion’s rise from his birth as a half-Drow bastard and servant, to being crowned Marquis Theates, heir to a dukedom in the Underdark.
- Early Years
- Sieia
- Rough Trade
- Weapons Training, Skirt Chasing and Pious Devotion
- The Things She Overhears
- A Thoroughly Nightmarish Evening
- Beneath, Something Worse Is Waiting
- I Don’t Want to Be There
- Krysztof, Cobbler King of the Gypsies
- The Flight from Liamelia
- The Adventuring Life
- A Considerable Heiress
- Fine Dresses and Suitors; a Home and a Husband
- The Purpose and Mainstay of His Short Life
- Dreaming of His Fine Eyes
- What a Blessing Widows Are!
- The Little Drow Elf Can Kick Your Ass
- Sentimental Matters
- Rare, Like Violets
- An Awkward Episode
- That Cruel and Masterful Man
- His Desperate Longing to Be Good
- The Habit of Taking Beautiful Things
- If You Knew How Much I Am Suffering, You Would Forgive Me
- Beautiful, Brilliant, Half-Mad and Entirely Reckless
- Already Dead
- A Partial and Uncertain Gift
- What He’s Been Looking for All Along
- Why Did You Come Here?
- Philomela Procne Arachne, Duchess Theates
- The Gods Made Us As We Are
- No More Than 108
- Ajax
- The Wild Card
- The First Trial: Batshit Crazy
- The Dignity and Nobility of Helpless Passion
- The Second Trial: How He Became This Way
- Funny and Shameful by Turns
- Androktasiai
- Burn the Witch
- Sheltering the Flame
- Proper Channels
- The Kingdom of This World Is Become the Kingdom of Our Lord
- I Didn’t Know Such Kindness Existed
- Patterned Motions and Cries
- The Third Trial: Personalized Moral Injury
- And So You Shall
- An Unenviable Domestic Situation
- The Usual High Cost of Blood and Treasure
- Ceremony, Vision, Illusion
- A Fucking Pity and a Waste
- The Museum of Aboveground Curiosities
- The Full Treatment
- Faith and Terror Shining in His Eyes
- Zero Minus One
- Trigger Point
- Giant, Clanking Brass Balls
- The Last Trial: Kicking the Hornet’s Nest
- Not Yet Wise or Predictable
- The Coronation of Inglorion Atropos Androktasiai, Marquis Theates
In The Magnificent Five, Inglorion grasps at the chance to earn Liamelian citizenship, accepting a letter of marque that allows — and obliges — him to stop shipments of slaves headed for the Underdark.
- The Magnificent Five
- Alexandra, King of the Gypsies
- A Side-Dish for a Roman Banquet
- Bathed in the Scent of Violets, Indulging in Reverie
- It Seems As If Everything Must Be Forgiven
- Like Wanting a Unicorn
- The Magnificent Five: Ajax
- A Charming Young Whelp and Adventurer
- Private Joy and Common Sorrow
- A Familiar Routine of Flirtation and Seduction
- Rosalee, the Gypsy Princess
- Cupid Spouts Latin to an Infant with a Soaked Diaper
- Curiously Disengaged
- All God and Gophers
- Charon of the Xyrec Army
- It Happens When She Can’t Get Things Right
- Incidents May Occur
- Rude and Inquisitive Elves
- The Heir and the Penniless Adventurer
- How to Be an Adult and a Gentleman
- Hot Punch, a Plate of Biscuits and a Briefing
- You’re Too Valuable to Die
- You’ve Been Forgotten
- You’re Just a Little Thing
- Persephone Eats Six Seeds
- A Grim and Unwelcome Reminder
- The Magnificent Five: Valentine Claudius Shelawn
- Allowing the Aftertaste of Jaded Sorrow to Fade
- How Like Your Father You Are
- Listening for a Miss
- Event Horizon
- Ignorance and Blindness
- Shoot Me up Already
- Even Victory is Bitter
- Lashed to an Iron Wheel
- The Sea Sprite Bar and Grill
- The Magnificent Five: Aramil Augustus
- Developing Actual Liking
- The Spinsters’ Chaise Lounge Incident and a Masculine Demand
- This Insupportable Loneliness
- How It Feels to Be Handsome and Charming
- An Unsettling Preview of a Mysterious Adult State
- Love Is Love
- This Is What He Does Not Want to Feel
- The Next Chapter for the Marquis of the Underdark
- Greta X
- The Magnificent Five: Lucius Scaevola D’Arcy
- A Half-Naked Warrior, Shining and Defiant
- Lying Chastely in the Arms of a Beautiful Young Man
- Madame Etoile
- I Couldn’t Stay Away
- Leaving His First Love Behind
- More Mysterious Than the Average Elf
- The Safety Is Removed
- Inglorion Falls in Love with Virginia
- An Extraordinary Woman
- No Man of Honor
- The Household Returns to Its Natural State
- Princely Paris, the Outlaw, the Adulterer
- The City Barracks
- The Letter of Marque
- The Others Should Follow, and Will
- An Impulse, Visceral and Piercing
- Effervescent, Honey-Flavored Hope
- His Lordship Used to Model When He Was Young and Needed the Money
- You’re the Only One Who Doesn’t See Your Scars
- Laying Down Pipe
- The Iliad, Naturally
- Risk Assessment
- Never Good or Careful
- The Magnificent Five Continue God’s Work
- Valentine’s Crime
- Bonne Nuit, Mon Enfant
- The First Mass Funeral, the Second Set of Graves
- It Is Bad Here
- I Couldn’t Stay Away
- So Shitty, So Hard
- Bad Alternatives, Unpleasant Consequences
- The Cruel Spur of Passion and Restlessness
- Inglorion Proposes
- Virginia Replies
- The 39 Articles
- Man and the Reason for Living
- With My Body, I Thee Worship
- A Plea for Guidance
- Doing God’s Work by Digging Privies
- The Patron Saint of Bastards
- Press on — Keep Going — Don’t Stop
- A Close-Run Thing
- Kneeling by the Altar
- The Magnificent Five: Conclusion
The Last Days of Tereus Shelawn tells the story of Inglorion’s troubled and charismatic father, Tereus Shelawn, an admired military leader and, later, convicted war criminal.
- The Last Days of Tereus Shelawn
- The Greatest Errors of His Career
- Of Course It’s Been Terrible
- Unhappy and Uncertain
- Part of the Flesh Itself
- One Episode in Decades of Combat
- He Will Not Submit to Boredom Tonight
- The Smooth, Hard Surface of His Indifference
- Particularly Brutal
- Going Headlong to the Devil
- Foreshocks
- The Few Positive Duties of Fatherhood
- Free Fall
- Xialo
- Nothing as Dramatic as Sieges and Plague
- I Wish You Could Forgive Me
- Struggling to Unite Thought and Feeling
- The Carnal Pleasure of Work
- The Golden Evening Rushed In
- His Scent and the Imprint of His Lips and Palms
- Lost Children Returning Home
- Forgive Me, Love Me, Let Me Love You
- Reckless Greed
- The Furies Settle in the Rafters
- Collateral Damage
- Sympathy and Longing
- Feeling His Humiliation
- One Last Thing to Break
- A Thoroughly Bad Man and a Reprobate
- Stay Cool, JP
- Let’s Roughhouse, Baby
- This Is Not How the Story Is Supposed to End
- Conclusion: The Great God Pain
Inglorion in the Elysian Fields finds our hero in an alien landscape after a terrible, unnamed event. His son Lucius has raised Inglorion from the dead, apparently so that he can buy chickens from a scarred and tattooed man who might be his father. Inglorion steals an iron owl, learns to grow and cure tobacco, and comes into his true inheritance.
- Inglorion in the Elysian Fields
- At the Foot of the Black Mountain
- Year Nine
- The Thousand Nights and One Night
- To The Pure, All Things Are Pure
- What You Fear Is True
- The Knowledge Grows Slowly Within
- Policing the Neighborhood
- Another Chapter in Rake’s Progress
- The Iron Owl
- Inglorion’s Hare-Brained Scheme
- Thirty Feet of Drop
- Who’s a Motherfucking Rock Star?
- Delighted with His Useless Gift
- To the First Storm of Summer
- A Bit Well to Live
- Isolation Suits Me
- The Fraternal Order of Civil War Veterans
- Surrounded by the Dead
- I Don’t Think Anything at All
- The Gods Can Show You Whatever They Want
- The Oldest Scars
- The Castaway
- Inglorion Claims His Inheritance
- Containers for His Grief
- He Cannot Regret It
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