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<p>Cal is being hunted. Stranded at the edge of the world, apprenticed to a madman, he spends his days training. Always training. When strangers appear in the remote mountain village asking questions, violence and danger follows. Can he use his skills to make safe those around him? Can he save himself?</p> <p>Ren is marked by Death. Everyone on the farm agrees, and they won't let him forget it. But murderous cultists with a penchant for kidnapping young men are abroad, and the boy the farmers blame for their troubles might be the only one who can help them.</p> <p>Sara is in danger. Recently arrived in the ancient city of Uldoroth to enter the service of the Queen, she is beset on all sides by the scheming ambitions of the court. War criminals, murderers, cultists, even her own family; nothing is as it seems, and she must learn to play their game, and play it well, if she is to survive.</p> <p>Each of them struggle to survive this vast fantasy world, as yet unaware that their stories are bound by a common thread; the abilities, schemes, and bloodlines of the almost mythical Chosen...</p> <p>... And someone is watching, in the deepest of darks. Who is the Scribe, and what will he see, before his story is told?</p> <p>The Book of the Chosen is something new for Royal Road. It's an epic fantasy series; light on exposition, heavy on experience, cinematic action, and patient storytelling. If you like traditional, rich, literary fantasy with vast worlds and deep characters, and want to make a home for stories like this online, this is the place for you.</p> <p>Book I is already written, and will run from Chapters 1 - 57, in two parts (Part I, Chapters 1-33). It's structured like a traditional novel; expect the chapters to be longer than typical Royal Road stories. It's a slow burn, with multiple threads, but the wait will be well worth it.</p> <p>New chapters every Monday, with the occasional bonus, and you can read a full 10 chapters ahead on Patreon.</p> <p>The Scribe has begun. Join the journey.</p> <p>'The Blackbird lifts its head,</p> <p>As it sings,</p> <p>Then disappears,</p> <p>Forever.'</p> <p>The World</p> <p>This story is meant to be experienced organically through the prose itself, but I've also summarised here some of the key context revealed early in Book I.</p> <p>It is a long story, with many threads and mysteries to unpack, but the destination is already written, and I hope you'll enjoy the journey we take in getting there. The Scribe has only just begun.</p> <p>The action of Book I is set on the eastern continent of Old Valia, shadowed by the recent historical upheaval of the Rebellion of Tears, a war fifteen years prior that shattered the land into a collection of independent states. Valia, the seat of the old kingdom, is a once proud land decimated by the rebellion and the plague that preceded it, dotted with ancient cities from before a calamity in the distant past known as the Breaking. The North, a hardy expanse of ice and wilderness across the Sea of Storms from Valia, took its independence, at great cost, during the Rebellion of Tears. The High Places, a mysterious, forested plateau inhabited by the elusive Elahi people, lies to the south, beyond the ancient, impassable ruin of the Dread Stones. These lands stand watch over the Teeth, an enormous rampart of mountains that runs north to south on their eastern border, said to have been raised by the First Maker during the Breaking, long ago. Beyond these vast black peaks, the Wastes, an endless land of ash and sand, turned to black ruin by the Darkness in that same ancient calamity. Beyond the great expanse of the Sea of the Maker to the west, the rest of the world, as enormous as it is varied, but, to explore that, you'll have to keep reading.</p> <p>The first part of Book I is set entirely in Valia, amid the ominous weight of encroaching danger. The Black Hand, a cult to the fallen god of death, are abroad again, the mysterious Greycloaks are nowhere to be found, and there are tantalising whispers of a greater evil. A dark, existential threat from deepest myth; the Darkness itself.</p> <p>The combined lands of Old Valia keep the same pantheon of nine gods, known as the Makers. These, as recounted early in the story, are: the First Maker, Ulwe, the storm god, Temur, Horis, the craftsman, Arana, the god of beauty, Lorar, lord of the seas, Falk, the god of trade, Raka, of farming and plenty, and Kar, the god of strength and war. The last is Death, who knows no name, though it is sometimes referred to by its physical embodiment, the Darkness, a supernatural doom that turned half the world to ash during the time of the Breaking. Before that time, these beings are said to have walked among men, until some of their number fought their great war, and the First Maker ended it by banishing the nine and the one from the physical world forever.</p> <p>There's plenty more history to uncover, here, both recent and ancient, but you'll have to wait to find out about it, and the lands beyond Old Valia, as our characters do.</p>
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