A Series

Diabolism, 1038

The year is 1038 and the world of Ytir is in upheaval and once again on the brink of catastrophe.

The Great War, though ended, still manages to cause strife: one country is on the brink of collapse; another profits off the former’s eminent demise despite suffering its own roiling politics; one country struggles turmoil as many of its citizens clamor for independence; another is in open civil war; a third is plagued by refugees; a sixth country is burdened by political terror. Diabolism, once widely practiced, is outlawed in almost every country as these ‘sinners’ are hunted; every citizen dreads standing accused of being such.

In Baden’s third most populous city, Aren Chastain works three jobs making minimal wages to help support her family during economically and morally deplorable times, when her Aspect is publically exposed. As the world she knows and—even—her family turn on her, she must find some way to handel the fallout or be driven away. Rudolf Langewintar, a veteran of the Great War, watches as his country rapidly backslides into the sort of violent tyranny he’d been hoping would’ve ended and, powerless to brake it, he finds himself targeted by the new regime.

As La Fleur du Sang de la Vierge Mère Marie—often shortened to Fleur Marie—collects on heavy reparations from Baden, the country struggles to balance its debts and war-time recovery. After the Colonel overseeing the Gaulae soldiers contracted to police the capital—Rose de Reines—is murdered, a musketeer—Lave Jules—conflicts with one of the foreigners who seems to always turn up in the most suspicious of ways.

In one of Aneska’s recently allotted territories—Gyula—civil war threatens once more. Gyulans are oppressed and have few personal freedoms; Aneska holds the citizens personally responsible for the Great War. Disguised as a man, Casamir Antonin—a woman who’d once been greatly injured in a mining accident—is now a criminal revolutionary trying to liberate her countrymen, keep her kid alive, and conceal her diabolic prosthetics.

Two farm boys, Jose and Arit—a diabolist—flee their homes in Melan to escape both the In-Rom Inquisition and the war. As they journey to ‘a safe place’, the pair struggles to traverse dangerous roads and their own feelings.

A set of twins from Spezza Corvo, the capital of Porto Gaulae, are separated after twenty-one years together: Rui Espíndola, recently up-jumped to LT. Colonel in Her Majesty’s army, bids his sister farewell as he leaves to join his new outfit in Fleur Marie—a short-term destination on the way to his ambitions of ‘Capital Management’; Yaritza, forever restless and irate, remains at the convent that’s served as ‘home’ for the past eleven years and attempts to make the ever-incoming refugees of Melan comfortable without losing her sanity.

Liev, a random citizen of Anliubov, is caught up in a political fiasco, but the would-be patsy will not allow himself to be carted off to execution for a crime he didn’t commit. Bringing along the political refugee that unwittingly dragged him into all of this, he tries to outrun a much… grander conspiracy.