Topher Lydon

F- the Veth!

Consciousness did not return to Mickey Ryder gently. It snapped back into his skull with the violent, jarring electrical hum of a Veth sterile environment. He opened his eyes, blinking against an overhead light so harsh, so blindingly, mathematically white that it felt like an icepick driven directly through his optic nerve. He lay flat on a raised observation table made of a cold, smooth material that felt suspiciously like polished bone. The air in the room was aggressively filtered, str

It happened quite a lot to the Crusaders. Radoslav just having enough and walking away to return to his kingdom. He sent a letter telling Darien he was on his own. Something Darien is going to have words about when he finally gets home and confronts the king. Radoslav is going to wet himself when Darien steps off a ship with an army, stating "Raddy, me old mate, let's 'ave a chat, shall we?"

"If you stay, you die." "He will drown in dust" "It won't help, it never does" Darien, and the Vanguard's fate doesn't lie in the "holy" land, it never did. They are extremely wealthy, heavilly armed, a fighting mercenary force 2300 men strong between the Vanguard and D'Avenel forces. Veterans all. France is about to have it's world turned upside down.

No, Darien's illness is not magical. He has been breathing in the dust of Judea, the sands of the desert for two years. He has also breathed in the fires and choking smoke of Jerusalem. The black ichor is him coughing up that smoke Key Facts About Silicosis The Cause: Breathing in respirable crystalline silica dust, which is found in sand, quartz, rock, and concrete. Who is at Risk: Workers in industries like mining, construction, sandblasting, quarrying, and manufacturing artificial/engineered stone. Symptoms: Persistent cough, ongoing shortness of breath, weakness, tiredness, and chest pain. Treatment: There is no cure for silicosis, as the lung scarring is irreversible. Treatment focuses on managing symptoms, stopping further exposure, and preventing complications like tuberculosis or lung infections

The Holy City was choking on its own salvation. By the seventeenth of July, the triumphant ecstasy of the Frankish conquest had curdled into a putrid, inescapable nightmare. The midsummer Judean sun did not warm; it punished. It beat down upon Jerusalem like a blacksmith’s anvil, baking the pale limestone streets and accelerating the rot of over ten thousand slaughtered Fatimid soldiers, Jewish civilians, and Muslim refugees. The bodies lay exactly where they had been hacked down. They were

I was contemplating doing something with the Second Crusade, but the amount of research that went into this one has left me tired. I might do a set next year, but this series took a lot out of me and I am still trying to regenerate braincells (went through a little burn out so wrote Vega Vixen to write something light

Our Brave Blue soul, and his mighty Glorb will battle!

I wanted to do it right, the truth unvarnished. I remember researching PTSD for this chapter, to try to get Darien's shock at what he was seeing, what he felt he had unleashed.

I keep being drawn back to Ashot. How a person can be just as Christian as the next person, but because he is the wrong colour, speaks a different language he'd have been just as dead in Jerusalem. When I new what I had to write for this chapter, I went back and rewrote the previous chapter to ensure the boys were all outside of the city when this happened. Writing this chapter was hard enough, I simply couldn't put the boys through it. Ashot, Tam, Connor, Steff and Wylan were underground. Julian was safe at Godfrey's side on the siege tower, Bran was safely leashed at the pavillion. I was very careful, I don't think any of us want to think of 15-17 year old kids walking through that horror. (I can be protective of my characters, I am fond of them... and there is only so much trauma I will set them through) The fact I broke Darien for this chapter was difficult enough.

Wylan hasn't given up yet. In this one, I bow to his wisdom.

Bibles at the time were all written in Latin, so only the wealthy and the priests could read them. They, in turn, selected which passages the common man was allowed to hear, and which were not. It allowed for complete control of the Word of God. A corrupt priest or lord could quote scripture to justify almost anything. A large number of bibles contradicted each other... it wasn't until the King James Bible, that a lot of these issues were consolidated and edited. (But James was an opportunist, and that version of the Bible suited his own aims). It is ironic, since the Bible itself states "Even the Devil himself can quote scripture"

They Veth are very alien, to them human beings are lesser animals, only slightly above Kyle's species. It is heavily inferred that they did what they do to the Pleasanto's to Humanity

The fall of the Holy City did not sound like a triumph. To Darien Haskal, the Warlord of the Vanguard, the moment the heavy bronze-banded gates of Jerusalem splintered and gave way under the relentless battering of Ser Lloyd’s shock troops, the world simply ceased to make a sound. It was an abrupt, catastrophic sensory severance. One moment, the air was a deafening, physical pressure—the roaring of thirty thousand Crusader throats, the shrieking of tearing timber, the chaotic, metallic cla

You know Gremlin has connections.

"You think you're the most evolved thing around. You're wrong."

tomorrow's chapter header: CHAPTER TEN: THE ART OF THE PRISON RIOT (Or, How to Destroy a Mothership in Your Underwear)

Read the next book to find out.

The next book is Ishan's journey from this point. The Sisters were all about deceit and trickery. So it is all explained in more detail in that book. @Seraph28 asked me to write about Ishan from this point onwards, and I liked the idea a lot. So I ran with it. He and Ibelin have their own journey to take that diverges from the Vanguard.

good, except to be clear Wylan was very specific in the text when he no longer feels Ishan is alive. The text is also explicit, they are carrying a body.

Oh the BIG IE is probably very aware of them, and they are effeminately on his list.

Don't under-estimate our Glorb yet!