Mark Smylie, author of Artesia and the Barrow, has a Patreon

[Ran]

@Habubu

Ah, thanks for sharing it! I actually found that one as well yesterday when I searched Reddit, but wondered if there were any other remarks.

His reference to Cyrus being "long bound in the Underworld" but then that he's "not commonly" found in the material world cracks the door open for someone like Ishraha being let loose/escaping from the Underworld on occasion. I'm reminded of the fact that the Historiae Mundi also mentions storms and strange omens the year of Artesia's birth... particularly in the ruins of the Green Temple. Sure feels like there was some sort of magical event brewing.

Re: the riven tower,

Spoiler

Linda and I were re-reading "The Seate of Vision" chapter and it reminded me of how often the riven tower has appeared. Hmm... and glancing at it again, the Last King is following the Eye of Ishraha when it appears. Hmm!

I feel like Artesia's powers have been implied to be even greater than Morfane's (perhaps by Urgrayne?) and we still have Urgrayne suggesting there's something about the father that seems important to it all. An actual Seated King as her father, rather than Byron... I suppose that'd be interesting in the political landscape, but would Urgrayne care that much about it?

I do agree that Mark could very well just keep her parentage a secret from readers and perhaps even from Artesia. At least for a long time. 

I hadn't thought of the possibility that finding the sword might have set her on this particular path. Fingers crossed that Bright Sword gets a bit into it, while also pushing forward the stories of Stjepan, Erim, etc.

 

[Habubu]

18 hours ago, Ran said:

An actual Seated King as her father, rather than Byron... I suppose that'd be interesting in the political landscape, but would Urgrayne care that much about it?

Probably not

Speaking of royal fathers and hidden progeny...

Spoiler

... the adventure scenario/module Witch's Price (which is included in the RPG source book) explains the backstory of the boy that Stjepan sees in the witch's hut in Black Heart. Have you read it?

 

Quote

I feel like Artesia's powers have been implied to be even greater than Morfane's (perhaps by Urgrayne?) and we still have Urgrayne suggesting there's something about the father that seems important to it all.

. . .

I do agree that Mark could very well just keep her parentage a secret from readers and perhaps even from Artesia. At least for a long time. 

I went to have a look at both appearances of Urgrayne (in Artesia and Book of Urgrayne). Here's what she says about Artesia's role/parentage/future etc.:

"Anger fills my veins when I think of your mother. What she was. What se could have been. What she could have made you. You wallow in blood and steel and shit. In the mundane, in the world of men... when you could have climbed the Heavens."

Is she talking about Argante or Artesia becoming Spring Queens or just demi-gods? Is it even possible to bring back the Golden Realm or would it be as likely as raising Númenor from the sea?

"Twice more shall Artesia and I meet as I told her... Though I did not tell her the when. Not the how. Do you think she believed me? Once on her path to Heaven, to Yhera's celestial palace, and once at her deathbed, on her final journey to the Underworld. Yet I have so much to tell her. So I will tell you, as we keep each other company, yes? So that upon her return you can tell her about her mother and who her father really was."

Three things:

Spoiler

1. is Artesia going bring Ghavaurer, the weapons designed to kill people who have Islik's blood in their veins, to Islik's domain? The notion sounds risky to say the least.

2. It sounds like Bran's decapitated head, Artesia's spy in Daradja, is going to spill the beans on everything he's seen or heard once Artesia comes back (which might not be for a long while -- I have a feeling that the campaign will take her across the Known World). So that's when she's supposed to learn of her father, I guess. Of course, that might not be when the reader learns about it, as you suggest.

3. The past tense suggests that the father is not alive anymore. Are there any clues in Historia Mundi as to which notable men died after Artesia was born?

Also, what's with the rune-skinned vulture? Is Artesia supposed to rule in the Underworld? Aren't the some of the demons supposed to be vulture-headed?

Quote

Fingers crossed that Bright Sword gets a bit into it, while also pushing forward the stories of Stjepan, Erim, etc.

Spoiler

I'm really excited to see what happens to Erim, especially now that important people have taken interest in her sword. She seems close to coming to terms with herself which will hopefully change her narrative a bit.

 

Edited February 7, 2022 by Habubu

[Ran]

@Habubu

Spoiler

I absolutely did not connect the boy to the adventure. Wow. I'm constantly amazed at how Mark has been able to keep all of these various pieces of information out there and then remembers to loop them all in to the story as they make sense. The RPG was published 17 years ago! And of course he has all this history mapped out -- the sidebar on the Tournament of Flowers includes the bit about Lady Fiona dancing with a disguised man who was not her betrothed...

 

6 hours ago, Habubu said:

s she talking about Argante or Artesia becoming Spring Queens or just demi-gods? Is it even possible to bring back the Golden Realm or would it be as likely as raising Númenor from the sea?

I definitely think she's talking about ascension moreso than reviving the Golden Realm. 

Spoiler

Yeah, Ghavaurer finding its way to Islik's domain could be pretty dangerous. 

 

6 hours ago, Habubu said:

3. The past tense suggests that the father is not alive anymore.

Since conception took place in the past, the act of becoming her father was also a past thing... so, I think that "was" is probably a bit tricky, since "is" would be too obvious that someone was actually still around. But assuming that they are in fact dead, I don't see any very obvious candidates in the Historiae. I mean, there's plenty of dead lords and dukes and kings and such, but nobody who I'd say leaps out at me. 

Which graphic novel is the vulture from? Can't quite place it.

[Ran]

Next week or so, Mark plans to have the PDF of the third and final part of Black Heart out on the Patreon. He has previously published two PDFs with part one and part two. He intends to go back, do some revision and correction (in particular it sounds like he'll be updating names of Daradjan characters mentioned earlier, as he's decided to develop their surname system), and put together a complete ("omnibus") edition that he hopes to find a publisher for.

 

[Habubu]

Quote

Which graphic novel is the vulture from? Can't quite place it.

It's a brief scene from Book of Urgrayne.

The pdf. and epub. versions of the final section of Black Heart have been uploaded on Patreon. Apparently the Kindle version is delayed a bit due to Amazon's layout software being a pain in the ass to work with.

There doesn't seem to be any precise info as to when the book will be released commercially in one piece.

The work on the sequel will have to wait; Mark's switching gears to work on the second edition of the RPG system and finishing Geographiae (the encyclopedic atlas/lore book that features some really nice looking illustrations).

Edited March 2, 2022 by Habubu
fixed a typo

[Ran]

An update for those interested on the worldbuilding side of things, Mark Smylie has been progressing along several fronts. Today he released a second section of the Geographiae Mundi. The first was awhile ago, about the University of Therapoli,  and this one is about the Great Guild of Therapoli (basically the organized underworld). Lots of character profiles of notable figures as well as maps of zones of influence, depictions of buildings, illustrations of typical scenes, etc. This is on top of a few new maps he released, including a climate map for the Known World, as well as a multi-page document on heraldry in the Middle Kingdoms covering Daradjan clan emblems and heraldry variations between the various kingdoms. He invented a whole new system for marking one's victories in the Great Tournaments of the setting, too, which is pretty neat.

I'm amazed at how fertile and thorough his approach to worldbuilding is.

(Also, Patreon members can now join a Discord channel where there's a running Q&A).

[Ran]

Smylie has been plugging away at art and the Geographiae Mundi, but posting to note that there's a sale at Drive Thru RPG, 30% off on everything they have in their catalog (including Black Heart) from him.

[Ran]

Smylie has been releasing bits and pieces of the Geographiae Mundi still, mostly all focuse don the Athairi. He's also revealed some stuff about the fae in the setting, their various courts and interests, including the fact that some of them hate mortals and want to destroy them.

But he dropped some huge stuff in the Discord Q&A just recently, regarding a significant character in The Barrow and Black Heart. I'm not quite 100% sure if I love everything about it, because it strays dangerously close to hoodwinking readers through some authorial sleight of hand that I'm not quite sure was wise.

Spoilers follow, for those who are curious and have read both novels:

Spoiler

Smylie has spoken quite openly about the fact that not only was Annwyn not necessarily in control of herself in the entirety of The Barrow... but in fact that in most of the Barrow, from the time of her brother Harvald's "death", she has actually been possessed by his spirit and under his control. The story of learning magic in secret? Lies Harvald-as-Annwyn told Stjepan to manipulate him. In fact, Annwyn knows nothing of magic and never read a book of magic.

Moreover, per Smylie, it's not until the first epilogue in Black Heart that we see the actual Annwyn, lost in darkness. The Annwyn who witnesses the vision of the throne? Also Harvald-as-Annwyn.

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by Ran

[JGP]

I hadn't checked lately [my bad] and I can get all three parts of Blackheart on Kindle CA now. Almost feel like I should give the first a reread. 

 

 

[Ran]

17 hours ago, JGP said:

I hadn't checked lately [my bad] and I can get all three parts of Blackheart on Kindle CA now. Almost feel like I should give the first a reread. 

I forget, had you read The Barrow? If not, it's the place to start, Black Heart is going to be rather confusing without it.

Another interesting thing he said in the Q/A is about the region of Daradja, where Artesia and her troops are from (they do not show up in The Barrow, but do start to crop up in Black Heart), that I hadn't quite twigged to. They follow the Old Religion with a pantheon of gods, very pagan, but Smylie mentioned in the Q&A on Discord that he explicitly approached Daradja with the idea of extrapolating what a pre-Christian, Greco-Roman civilization would look like if it had made it to the Middle Ages. Like, it's all "obvious" there, but his use of clans and highlands and so on obscured it a bit. It goes pretty far, too, the analogy -- he talked about how in Daradja, being part of the demos a citadel was basically a big social advantage (it's why "citadel-born", rather than "noble", is the highest social class in Daradja).

[JGP]

22 minutes ago, Ran said:

I forget, had you read The Barrow? If not, it's the place to start, Black Heart is going to be rather confusing without it.

 

I've read it. Is there a recap at the start of Blackheart?

[Ran]

32 minutes ago, JGP said:

I've read it. Is there a recap at the start of Blackheart?

Not really. It does sort of fill in details from The Barrow as it goes, especially I think the situation in Therapoli.

[Ran]

For those curious about the Geographiae Mundi, a fellow fan of Smylie posted to Reddit with a few of the ~53 pages of the Athairi section that Smylie has now (mostly) completed (when it gets published as part of the RPG, it would have system-relevant stuff). He's now going to do a similar section for the Danians, and shared loose plans for a multi-volume series that would cover the rest of the Known World.

Edited January 22, 2023 by Ran

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Is the author going to publish the latest work as a single book?

[Ran]

48 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Is the author going to publish the latest work as a single book?

I believe he intends to, but I can't recall what the precise holdup was. I think he wanted to do one more editing pass on it, maybe.

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

I'm honestly amazed at how detailed his worldbuilding is. Maybe even a little jealous too.

[Ran]

10 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

I'm honestly amazed at how detailed his worldbuilding is. Maybe even a little jealous too.

I am constantly shocked about it. He's a one-man-band and he has developed so much of the setting, and clearly has ideas for tons more.

In fact, here's his present plan for the Geographiae:

Quote

Vol 1: The Middle Kingdoms
Vol 2: The Highlands of Daradja
Vol 3: The Empire of Thessid-Gola
Vol 4: Palatia & the Isle of Khael
Vol 5: Illia & Hemipsia
Vol 6: The Kessite Kingdoms
Vol 7: The Unknown World & The Edge of Adventure

Plus a possible Cosmographia Mundi which would delve into many worlds and spheres of the cosmos (the various hells, the celestial spheres, etc.)

He's done 50 pages on the Athairi, he'll probably do similar for the Danians (the next Middle Kingdom culture) and I'm guessing 50 pages for the Aurians, for ~150 pages for volume 1....

He does admit that if they're all going to be that length, it's probably an impossible task, but he's aiming big. And that's on top of starting the third novel and creating, play testing, and publishing a 2nd edition of the RPG. 

Sadly, it seems pretty obvious he'll never get around to doing the comic again. Shame, I really wish he'd have time to finish Artesia Besieged, at least...

ETA: One aspect of his world-building I should note is that it's not 100% fixed from what he first set down. The world has evolved. He's noted that in the comics, for example, he thinks he ended up giving everyone too-small armies, and so in his mind if he were to do it over again (or cover it again in future novels), things like the 3,000 or so Artesia leads would probably actually be more like 7,000. That, and also he has generally wanted to move away from strictly "medieval", so as I've noted before some Early Modern stuff is creeping in at the margins (like fashion).

Edited January 22, 2023 by Ran

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

@Ran

Damn, that is ambitious! I'll definitely be checking out the Geographiae whenever it comes out though now I'm reminded of the fact I haven't touched my own epic fantasy setting in over a year. Sigh.

P.S. The early modern era is criminally underused. Seriously, how has someone NOT turned the Italian Wars into an award-winning TV show I'll never figure out.

[Ran]

For those who wanted to wait on reading Black Heart until it was available in print, Smylie has not found a publisher for the book, so he's self-publishing for now. The novel, split into three parts, is just over 1,300 pages. You can find the link to the first one here.

@AncalagonTheBlack

[Habubu]

I received my copy of the three-volume novel. Having never ordered any print-on-demand product before, I had my reservations about the quality of the printing. Everything seems fine, however. The print is clear and sharp, the paperback binding appears to be perfectly adequate. It looks and feels like a real book.

Reading it in PDF form did not prepare me for how massive the thing is. Chapter one doesn't start until page 71, for goodness sake! (That's not a complaint, by the way; epic fantasy is at its best when there's a certain degree of narrative sprawl)