Topher Lydon

Julian is VERY accommodating.

Ser Lloyd, Mouse Knight, and the Largest Lance of the Crusade.

Ahh the three couples Wylan and his Darien, comfortable married couple. Publically "Married" and untouchable for it. Julian and his Lloyd, well the poor mouse knight dragged around by his lord "husband" Ashot and his Steffy, ha! HAHAHAHAHAHAH! HA! BWAHAHAHAHHA Stephen is learning how to domesticate his wild alley cat of a boyfriend.

It begins a year or more of paralysis while the Lords of the Crusade bicker, bitch, and jockey for power over who rules Antioch. It very nearly killed the crusade. Raymond of Toulouse was a nut-job, seeing a path to power in a hunk of rusted metal, and the fervor of the mob. (Ultimately the man was a coward and a charlatan, but a VERY dangerous one) Darien's decision to take his army out of Antioch and go it alone forces their hands. He does it to save Wylan, but there is a price...

You are cordially invited... To the farce that is a wedding.

The Road to Jerusalem begins Good morning, and welcome back to the Crusade

The summer sun struck the ancient walls of Antioch like a blacksmith’s hammer, turning the pale Syrian stone to blinding, molten white and baking the blood-soaked mud of the siege into cracked, dusty earth. July had descended upon the Orontes valley with a suffocating, unrelenting vengeance, as if the heavens were determined to remind the victorious Crusaders that surviving the freezing, starving winter had been merely the prelude to their trials. The heat shimmered in visible waves above the co

The morning of the wedding brought no relief from the heat, but the lower palace was a whirlwind of frantic, chaotic preparation. The Orontes valley baked beneath a merciless, cloudless sky, the sun beating down on the cracked masonry, the shattered siege towers, and the blood-soaked plains until the very air seemed to waver and distort. It had been weeks since the Vanguard had broken the great army of Kerbogha, weeks since they had gorged themselves on captured Seljuk grain and finally slept wi

The siege is over. The city is theirs. But for Darien Haskal and his feral Vanguard, the real war has just begun. Raymond of Toulouse has seized the Holy Lance and declared himself God's chosen commander. Baldwin of Edessa plots from the north, hungry for revenge. And somewhere in the Sultan's tent, a prince's back is being carved open to pay for Antioch's fall. The Vanguard marches south alone—extorting coastal cities, hunting spies in the hills, and building a sanctuary for outcasts. Jerusalem waits. But the road is paved with fanatics, betrayal, and the corpses of kings.

Peter vs Wylan is core to the next book

This is my Malibu Lukas, and this is my Horse vet Lukas... and this one comes with a pink convertible...

It's the moment that he realizes he can have 100 adoring Lukas's fawning over him with fans, grapes, and using one as his foot rest.

I have characters, but no story yet... still trying to handle the muse who is dragging me around LA weird right now... poor Flynn needs to be rescued from himself half the time.

Trip would be down for that

He's a very bad boy

There's a small fire in the library, let's flood the city and release the KRAKEN!

Rikard is suffereing from his son, his son's idiot boyfriend, and the family dog stealing his spare army and going for a joyride. There's going to need to be:

Volgograd filled the viewport like a wound. The descent had been silent—stealth systems engaged, transponder broadcasting CSC credentials, the Raptor sliding through the upper atmosphere like a knife through silk. Lukas's hands were steady on the controls, his eyes moving between the display and the viewport, his breathing slow and controlled. The combat package was active, feeding him data, calculating trajectories, assessing threats. But the threats, so far, were nonexistent. The f

It is a major plot point of the next book. And leads into Lost in the Sand. Ishan finds his place

The Final Battle of Antioch was nuts. Keborgha relied on allies that HATED him, this was his great power grab to usurp Kalijj Arslan, and the army, made up of his rivals, were only too glad to see him fail. So they just waited, watched him commit, and then said "Nah, you're on your own mate, toodles!" So the supposed army of 40000 was made of nothing but betrayal and empty promises. The Alliance shattered, and with it a MASSIVE amount of Kalijj Arslan's remaining authourity. He'd end up spending the next few decades fighting a civil war. Total disaster. The Seljuks do get their revenge, the botched "Totally not at all a Second Crusade, but actually was a second Crusade, shhhh we lost that one don't tell anyone..." for example, that saw Bohemond stuffed in a Seljuk prison, and a corrupt pope hurling UTTER idiots at Turkey, AND the Byzantine Empire... despite neither actually being the holy land.... *ahem* (coughs) Morons (coughs)

And Ashot appreciates your patronage, but what Ashot choses to do with coin is Ashot's business. After all, SOMEONE has to make sure Stephan has coin, Ashot knows full well that a Stephan's a broke monk and at this rate Ashot is NEVER going to be kept in the lifestyle to which he WANTS to be accustomed. Stupid squire salary!

Darien has been writing to, and sending silver home to his son through out both books. Atreus was from before he met Wylan, and his reason for going on Crusade. The mother was someone in Lady Adele Haskal's staff, she died, and Atreus has been raised by the Dowager Baroness ever since. The same way she and her husband raised Darien. Granny Adele is a powerhouse, like her husband was.

Steffy has a coin now.

Thirteen days had passed since the star fell. Thirteen days of hunger, of waiting, of watching the food stores dwindle to nothing. The Crusaders had eaten the last of the pack animals on the eighth day. They had boiled leather on the tenth. They had scraped the bottom of the grain barrels on the twelfth, found nothing but dust, and had gone to sleep with empty bellies and hollow eyes. On the morning of June 28th, Darien stood at the window of the solar, looking out at the army that was