Irenthar: City of Hate
“Veorn dismissed the shattered remnants of the shield, instead pouring more of his Bound shadow into weakening gravity’s grip on him, throwing up a disc beneath him to catch himself. Outside of the light cast by Vire’s lantern, Veorn felt shadow surge into his Bound reserves once more. Wiping the blood from his eyes, he flung himself upwards, soaring past Vire and the ruined balcony. He looked downwards, and as expected, Vire had once again Bent the light of his lantern to his legs, and was rocketing upward, chasing Veorn. Veorn smiled.
Just as I’d hoped. Lumotheurges are so direct. So… predictable.”
Irenthar: City of Hate is my longest-running creative project, having first started taking form when I was 13 years old. It is a celebration of the epic high fantasy tales I have been raised on, mixed with the political intrigues I have always loved.
City of Hate follows the tale of the half-noble bastard and con man Veorn Tarennis, and Alice, highborn socialite, deadly combatant, and his beloved wife. Barely kept out of reach of the ironclad stranglehold of the law by their wits and their magical abilities to Bind shadow and Bend light, Veorn and Alice have thus far always come out ahead as the most successful criminals in the city of Irenthar. Officially well-respected purveyors of construction materials, their trade in timber and brick is nothing more than a facade for the greatest arms smuggling network this side of the continent. Wherever there is conflict, the Tarennises will be making a killing.
And business is good indeed, for the tyrannical rule of Trabaster Arthenon, sorceror-tyrant and self-styled ‘Grand Master’ of the Northern Plains, has invited resistance and revolt ever since his troops first came from the seas on Demonic winds eighty-three years ago. The burgeoning Kingsmen Rebellion, rallying behind a God-blessed half-Elf, is preparing to shatter the Grand Master’s Realm and liberate the Northern Plains.
Veorn, however, cares little for the politicking and grand ideological justifications for the struggle. All that matters to him is that the Grand Master’s autocratic regime poses an unacceptable risk to his enterprises, and so he needs to go. If he can use the Kingsmen as a distraction while he steals Arthenon’s entire treasury right out from underneath him, then so much the better.
But the Grand Master and the Kingsmen aren’t the only ones with interests in the Northern Plains. The newly-minted ambassador of the Elves of Ordoria offers a deal that sounds too good to be true. Can she be trusted? Can her masters in their far-off capital? Even if they can… will they be able to maintain their grasp on power?
When push comes to shove, and a worse fate than even the Grand Master’s tyranny threatens to befall the Northern Plains, will Veorn and Alice truly let it all burn to claim their prize?
Since its inception, Irenthar: City of Hate has spiraled into a massive multimedia worldbuilding project, growing from a high fantasy story of political intrigue into the sprawling wider world of Tharassian. You can find more information on this massive worldbuilding project here.