The rules forbid killing—until the final round. Any other trickery or violence is encouraged.Held every two hundred fifty years.
Wendigo
"…corpse-eaters insatiable for flesh, ravenous for blood. They feed and feed, but can never be sated."
Found in the boreal forests of cold and northern lands. Distinguishable by their long, knifelike claws, and bodies that are forever emaciated.Will dig up graves for flesh.
The Accession
"And a time shall pass that all immortal beings in the Lore, from the Valkyrie, vampire, Lykae, and demon factions to the phantoms, shifters, fey, and sirens…must fight and destroy each other."
A kind of mystickal checks-and-balances system for an ever-growing population of immortals. Occurs every five hundred years. Or right now…
"A lot of people fear change. And traveling. And disarray. Sidewalk crack avoidance is more common than one would suspect."
—Holly Ashwin, Tulane math instructor, PhD candidate with an emphasis on formal and computational cryptography
"The first rule of being a mercenary? Find out what the client wants, then convince him that, a) you can get it for him, and, b) you're the only one who can get it for him. Second rule? Lie. Often. The truth rarely serves you well in this business."
—Cadeon Woede, mercenary, second in line to the throne of the rage demons, a.k.a. Cade the Kingmaker
Prologue
Rothkalina, the Kingdom of the Rage Demons
In ages long past
Cadeon Woede came upon the headless bodies of his foster father and brothers first, the three slain in a desperate defense of their home.
Their remains littered the ground near a demolished section of the barricades around their farmstead. Cadeon recognized the merciless slaughter as the work of revenants, corpse creatures dispatched by Omort the Deathless, their kingdom's most dreaded enemy.