Synopsis
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)
Table of Contents
- 1Chapter One - To the Bosom of Mother Irizah2024-11-13
- 2Chapter Two - A Long-Fingered Man2024-11-13
- 3Chapter Three - Give Us Your Kings2024-11-13
- 4Chapter Four - Tricolour Giant2024-11-13
- 5Chapter Five - Orange Comets Dance Amidst Metal Throats2024-11-13
- 6Chapter Six - Beneath Vulture-Jackal-Justice2024-11-13
- 7Chapter Seven - The Tanner-Eygi Scale of Fleshly Quality2024-11-13
- 8Chapter Eight - Broken-Tooth Indulgences2024-11-13
- 9Chapter Nine - Leaf, Glass, Yellow, Silver2024-11-13
- 10Chapter Ten - First Epistles to the Colonials2024-11-13
- 11Chapter Eleven - Second Epistles to the Colonials2024-11-13
- 12Chapter Twelve - The Room of Ivy and Keys2024-11-13
- 13Chapter Thirteen - Riding Atop the Nameless Dead2024-11-13
- 14Chapter Fourteen - Dodecahedral Heart2024-11-13
- 15Chapter Fifteen - Shaded from Vineyard Clouds by a Smiling Swan2024-11-13
- 16Chapter Sixteen - Pickled Surrealists and Tadpole Royalists2024-11-13
- 17Chapter Seventeen - A Sleepless Night2024-11-13
- 18Chapter Eighteen - Anguilla Oracula2024-11-13
- 19Chapter Nineteen - Horsehide Surrealists2024-11-13
- 20Chapter Twenty - Finger-Wings atop Mist and Artery2024-11-13
- 21Chapter Twenty-One - Ever-Burning2024-11-13
- 22Chapter Twenty-Two - The Interminable Pale2024-11-13
- 23Chapter Twenty-Three - Recollections of the Founder's Eye2024-11-13
- 24Chapter Twenty-Four - Blue Silks and Swedes2024-11-13
- 25Chapter Twenty-Five - Land of Poor Omens2024-11-13
- 26Chapter Twenty-Six - Arrival at Centrifugal Station2024-11-13
- 27Chapter Twenty-Seven - No Country for Humans2024-11-13
- 28Chapter Twenty-Eight - Chain-Towers and Cage-Trees2024-11-13
- 29Chapter Twenty-Nine - Unicorn of the Secret Police2024-11-13
- 30Chapter Thirty - Worm in an Ina Cage2024-11-13
- 31Chapter Thirty-One - Seed-Cake-Bear-Trap2024-11-13
- 32Chapter Thirty-Two - Phrenology Takes Guts2024-11-13
- 33Chapter Thirty-Three - The Great Seal and a Walk in the Snow2024-11-13
- 34Chapter Thirty-Four - A-Judging We Shall Go2024-11-13
- 35Chapter Thirty-Five - A Chat at the Consultancy2024-11-13
- 36Chapter Thirty-Six - Eight Volatile Suns and a Cranial Moon2024-11-13
- 37Chapter Thirty-Seven - The Velveteen Absence2024-11-13
- 38Chapter Thirty-Eight - Redbrick Sarcophagus2024-11-13
- 39Chapter Thirty-Nine - The Cage and the Iron2024-11-13
- 40Chapter Forty - Conspiracies over Coffee2024-11-13
- 41Chapter Forty-One - Analgesic Confession2024-11-13
- 42Chapter Forty-Two - Webless Wasp2024-11-13
- 43Chapter Forty-Three - Out of the Cold2024-11-13
- 44Chapter Forty-Four - Fingerprint Cantina2024-11-13
- 45Chapter Forty-Five - First Rumbling2024-11-13
- 46Chapter Forty-Six - Cold Cuts2024-11-13
- 47Chapter Forty-Seven - Giantess Kissed by Dew2024-11-13
- 48Chapter Forty-Eight - Click-Click-Click2024-11-13
- 49Chapter Forty-Nine - Judge a Man by the Cats he Keeps2024-11-13
- 50Chapter Fifty - Hung Up To Cure2024-11-13
- 51Chapter Fifty-One - Gubernatorial Antumbra2024-11-13
- 52Chapter Fifty-Two - The Black Land2024-11-13
- 53Chapter Fifty-Three - The Stink of Paranoia2024-11-13
- 54Chapter Fifty-Four - Mutalith2024-11-13
- 55Chapter Fifty-Five - Three-Two-Three-Four?2024-11-13
- 56Chapter Fifty-Six - The Crow Wind2024-11-13
- 57Chapter Fifty-Seven - Sleight of Hand2024-11-13
- 58Chapter Fifty-Eight - The Hourglass of Tumbledown Cottages2024-11-13
- 59Chapter Fifty-Nine - The Indigo Shade of Corruption2024-11-13
- 60Chapter Sixty - Memories of Sweat2024-11-13
- 61Chapter Sixty-One - Prevarications to a Meeting2024-11-13
- 62Chapter Sixty-Two - The Chained Towers2024-11-13
- 63Chapter Sixty-Three - Bear's Blood2024-11-13
- 64Chapter Sixty-Four - Unbidden Guests2024-11-13
- 65Chapter Sixty-Five - Golden Bedwarmer2024-11-13
- 66Chapter Sixty-Six - The Silk Noose2024-11-13
- 67Chapter Sixty-Seven - Carnivorous Halls2024-11-13
- 68Chapter Sixty-Eight - The Father-Bird2024-11-13
- 69Chapter Sixty-Nine - His Eyes2024-11-13
- 70Chapter Seventy - Killing Field2024-11-13
- 71Chapter Seventy-One - Storm-Tossed Oracle, Blood-Cloaked Giant2024-11-13
- 72Chapter Seventy-Two - The Causeway2024-11-13
- 73Chapter Seventy-Three - Epitaph2024-11-13
- 74Chapter Seventy-Four - Permission to Sleep2024-11-13
- 75Chapter Seventy-Five - Psychodrama2024-11-13
- 76Chapter Seventy-Six - Ambassadorial Overtures2024-11-13
- 77Chapter Seventy-Seven - Swallowing Salt2024-11-13
- 78Chapter Seventy-Eight - Formation of Horizontal Eyelids2024-11-13
- 79Chapter Seventy-Nine - Spelunking Speculations2024-11-13
- 80Chapter Eighty - Abducted Unruly God2024-11-13
- 81Chapter Eighty-One - Porous Manse2024-11-13
- 82Chapter Eighty-Two - Undying Silence2024-11-13
- 83Chapter Eighty-Three - Tightening of the Mind2024-11-13
- 84Chapter Eighty-Four - Vapour Halo, Untried Blossoms2024-11-13
- 85Chapter Eighty-Five - Broken-Tooth2024-11-13
- 86Chapter Eighty-Six - Into the Black Echo2024-11-13
- 87Chapter Eighty-Seven - Iron and Burgundy2024-11-13
- 88Chapter Eighty-Eight - Fleshly Baptism2024-11-13
- 89Chapter Eighty-Nine - It Speaks!2024-11-13
- 90Chapter Ninety - Anareta2024-11-13
- 91Chapter Ninety-One - Court of the Axe2024-11-13
- 92Chapter Ninety-Two - Menagerie Doctrine2024-11-13
- 93Chapter Ninety-Three - Redhead Reunification2024-11-13
- 94Chapter Ninety-Four - The Horn-Back Interception2024-11-13
- 95Chapter Ninety-Five - Double Tap2024-11-13
- 96Chapter Ninety-Six - Brightest of Calms2024-11-13
- 97Chapter Ninety-Seven - Dryheart2024-11-13
- 98Chapter Ninety-Eight - Ironsky Interviews2024-11-13
- 99Chapter Ninety-Nine - Scapegoat2024-11-13
- 100Chapter One Hundred - Vulture-Gazer's Wall2024-11-13
- 101Chapter One Hundred and One - A Red Sun Dawns2024-11-13
- 102Chapter One Hundred and Two - Kingdom of Hermits2024-11-13
- 103Chapter One Hundred and Three - Madness is Concrete-Coloured2024-11-13
- 104Chapter One Hundred and Four - Roaring Tides2024-11-13
- 105Chapter One Hundred and Five - The Silent Horde2024-11-13
- 106Chapter One Hundred and Six - Gunpowder Priests2024-11-13
- 107Chapter One Hundred and Seven - The Pelican and the Eel2024-11-13
- 108Chapter One Hundred and Eight - Minotaur Doctrine2024-11-13
- 109Chapter One Hundred and Nine - Journal of a Plague Night2024-11-13
- 110Chapter One Hundred and Ten - Now We Are Two2024-11-13
- 111Chapter One Hundred and Eleven - The Eel Who Brightens the World2024-11-13
- 112Chapter One Hundred and Twelve - Pale Fire2024-11-13
- 113Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen - The Madness of Crowds2024-11-13
- 114Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen - Banner of the Axe2024-11-13
- 115Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen - Disassembly Line2024-11-13
- 116Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen - Outrider2024-11-13
- 117Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen - Neurotransmitter Sacrament2024-11-13
- 118Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen - Unending Unendurable2024-11-13
- 119Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen - Mantra2024-11-13
- 120Chapter One Hundred and Twenty - Begin?2024-11-13