Tanner Magg is a woman of three cities. Of Mahar. Of Jovan. And of Fidelizh. And gorging on three origins, she has grown. With rites and with knowledge... and size. By the glittering of Maharite throat-jewels and satin gloves, by the austere hierarchies of the Jovanian lodges, and most completely, under the aegis of the Golden Parliament of Fidelizh, immersed in the traditions of the Judges of the Golden Door.

From three origins, she has become something more. When she was born, she was called a giant, her bones too big, her frame too swollen with muscle. To Mahar, a destined dockworker. To Jovan, a hopeless freak. To Fidelizh... to the Judges? Something else. Something better. Now, she hides her massive back under a judge's robe, swaddles her stone-carved face in ashen ritual decorations and precise inking-goggles, gnaws on sacred confectionaries with her unreasonably large teeth, and weighs her fingers with theurgic quills. Stands taller than her kin, and grumbles like a mother bear when displeased, but otherwise acts as a proper Judge should. Endured all the stragenesses of a city where gods ride on the backs of civilians, and Judges are compelled to act in playhouses. Endured. All is well.

Until she's reassigned. Sent to an obscure colony in the north, to a place abandoned during the Great War and now reoccuppied by Fidelizhi citizens, hungry for law and proper jurisprudence. Commanded by her superiors, Tanner sets forth to this place, where Fidelizhi imports clash with northern locals, still dedicated to their thirty-seven towers of antiquity, to their old gods of the hammer and eye. To them, the giantess goes to inflict all the iron mercies of the law. To them, she goes to ensure the world operates as it should, for when the law is given truly, then there is no need for private grudges, private debts, private squabbles, and all is rationalised and harmonised through the ministry of the Golden Texts.

Until a Fidelizhi notable is murdered.

Until a flood of remnant mutants, spawn of the Great War and lingering after its end, begin to spill from the ground, a flood that must be weathered... by a population now suspecting everyone of murderous intent. If this grudge lingers, no-one will survive the mutant storm, no-one.

And in Tanner Magg, the old mother bear rouses from her sleep. And the giant-judge walks, book in one hand and gavel in the other. In her sleeps slow anger, slow to rouse and hard to suppress. In her is nervousness, a novice promoted beyond her capacities. In her is zeal, dedication to the logics of the Golden Door.

And upon her back rests the fate of every single person in this entire wretched colony, stranded in the cold desolation, amidst ruin and graveyard and wilderness.

Simple, really.

(Cover by SorrySorrow, on Artstation)

(Sequel to Orbis Tertius, same universe, different characters. Context is likely useful)