A quick note: there has been one major revision across Book 1, which will be in the Royal Road version, but won't be updated in the Patreon version because the handful of places I needed to change are VERY minor.Luke is going for more empire ambitions. The Recap goes into this more.

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Blurb:

The world calls undeath evil, and Luke has been spending every day since his rebirth into a corpse trying to prove it does not have to be.

After saving Mistbrook and turning Fort Watch into the first Grave Node of his planned empire, Luke traveled to Woundmere with a holy writ around his neck and a dangerous idea in his head: the cursed vines of fate, and the cages built around those who seek freedom, can be broken by his power. The dead can hold the door wide by gathering food, protecting fields, and safeguarding the living.

But Woundmere is not Mistbrook. The city is built into the terraces of a massive, glassed crater, and is a place where temples, guilds, archives, laws, industry, and the scars of the divine are ever present. It greets Luke with suspicion, bureaucracy, and holy politics. It is a place where profits are drawn from the scars of the past no longer understood—the consequences of ancient actions.

Worse yet, people’s reactions are not predictable. Some have started to venerate him. To the desperate, broken, and furious, Luke is not a monster…he is a sign: one who has violated the divine order. A new type of Undead sent to shatter the gods’ chains. And those believers are capable of committing horrors in his name.

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AI Mockup cover (will be replaced with actual artist)

GB 2 - Luke’s Journal - Book 1 Recap

Third Jorday of Dovrak, 1552 P.E.F.

The last few weeks have been…something else. The Dawnbringers who took me into temporary custody have left me in a decent room in their headquarters. I’m supposed to be meeting with the local Commander any time now. In the meantime, I figured I should spend my time doing…something productive. I’ve never been one for journaling out the past, and just use my notebook for…taking notes. But, maybe getting my thoughts onto paper will help me process everything that’s happened.

So, first off, I died. I was shot back on Earth. At the same time, some Necromancer shredded a person’s Soul in this fantasy world called Artesthrak. Lucky me, in a way, my Soul got sucked into this other…reality’s system. I got shoved into the corpse of a Dawnbringer—basically a holy police officer—named William Whitemane. That’s important for later, because my entire fucking circumstances right now are due to the bastard’s actions.

Anyways, back on track. I woke up as a corpse, and the Necromancer tried taking control of me. I killed him in self defense, and then this guy, a deity called The Last Warden, told me all about what I was and my role in it all.

I am Undead. I have a Class called Gravebound Knight: sort of like a knight with Death themed powers. I understand and get to ‘cheat’ the magic of the world by using a system called VITAE. It’s sort of like a heads-up-display that overlays my vision. No magic learning for me, I just get to use magic off the get go! 

They split things into categories here. Arts, which are like spells—sustained or activated, and then Aspects, which are passive buffs. It’s all considered ‘magic’ to them. Not everyone gets VITAE, but they do have something similar in a heads-up-display of some type.

Well, I killed that Necromancer, learned about VITAE, got some levels, raised some Undead of my own as minions, and began exploring Fort Watch. The place was in ruins, and I set to repairing it as best I could. While exploring, I found records as well. Some fucked up stuff happened there. A plague, executions to keep it from spreading, nasty shit. 

Some trapper who was injured, a guy named Garran, showed up being chased by monsters called Fog Creepers. I fought them off, and then left my Undead to guard the Fort while I got him back to town. A place called Mistbrook. 

It was then that I learned a bit of the geography of the world. Mistbrook was in the middle of a forested region called the Timbercrag Valley. Fort Watch was a bit farther into the valley, and Woundmere, the city I am now at, is at the farthest end where it opens up to plains and farmland. It’s on a continent called Graksuul, and is apparently one of the recent ‘expansions’ to the world. 

I imagine what I want to do is going to involve me heading to other, older places. Not new expansions, but existing locales. But more on that later.

I got Garran back to the town, and was, thankfully, not completely reviled because of the nature of my being. For an Undead, I’m not half bad looking. I just carry a creepy air about me, and people immediately know that something is ‘off’ just by being nearby. I imagine it is how I feel when around Life Power sources—full-body tingles that feel like my foot is falling asleep. I’m sure my glowing blue eyes are also a big issue with some of the folks. About a third of the town hated my guts (which I know I have, because I was holding them at one point).

I socialized a bit, learned that I can eat and drink, but everything is dull and muted. I can’t keep it down, and have to get rid of it later on. Silver lining, I don’t need to eat, sleep, or drink. If I want time to pass, I can just enter something called torpor, and it’s like being put under anesthesia. Pretty neat way to pass centuries, I suppose, if I ever needed to do that for whatever reason.

Fog Creepers attacked the town, I helped defend it, and even saved some people by running into the forest with one of their Guard Captains, Amara. That was awkward. Apparently, she and William were a bit of a thing, and she fell in love with him. Must’ve been super weird and fucked up, seeing the guy she was getting it on with, but it’s not really him.

This is my body. My body. Not William’s. 

It’s bullshit that I have to deal with whatever drama he left behind when he went to Fort Watch. I have no clue why he left Woundmere in the first place, but it can’t be for any good reason, given the reception I experienced. I am sure that I’ll have to resolve whatever consequences he left behind before I can do what I want to do.

Anyways, back to the journaling. I got the people back from Fog Creepers, learned how they’re birthed (eww…just, no, not writing about that process), and then had to wait for Dawnbringers to show up. The priestess at Mistbrook had used an emergency beacon (a candle of all things. Really? Magic candles?) to call for them. 

So, I got to hold onto a lovely (hope the sarcasm comes through) stupid device that burned me but revealed the truth. Commander Andros, a guy who gave me this writ of passage that should have let me go around Woundmere without issue, was actually pretty chill. The man didn’t see my situation as something horrid or against the natural order. So, he let me go to Fort Watch with a group of his folks.

We got there, my Undead were destroyed, and we cleared the fort of Fog Creepers that had moved in. Afterwards, I used my first Grave Node. Alpha is its name (his name? I never asked what he wanted to be made. I’ll assume him, because it is like a copy of me). Alpha was put in charge, but would take orders from the Captain who stayed there. I also learned that I can spend an hour meditating in a dark place to talk to him, regardless of distance. Hopefully, maybe, later on, I can learn an Art that lets me teleport to Grave Nodes. That would be epic.

Anyways, the Captain—Stephanie—she gave me a task, and if I completed it, I would get the writ of passage. Garran was kind enough to come along and guide me. So, we went into the Everfog Forest, and found a ton of Fog Creeper birthing grounds (again, eww). We killed them, I raised a bunch of Undead (including skeleton big cats, which was pretty awesome), and we got all the way to a place called The Forest’s Heart.

It’s there I discovered that there’s nonhuman, humanoid races. Dryads in particular at that place. We freed them from captivity (they were stuck in a tree with no connected ones thanks to the Fog Creepers), and then I…accidentally cursed the land.

But it wasn’t my fault! I swear. I was just following a Quest. I changed the Forest’s Heart to shift from pure Life to Gravebloom—the combination of Life and Death. That changed the dryads, giving them offensive capabilities, and also shifted the forest landscape. The trees are still there, but they were all grey-shifted. That was kind of neat to see.

We got back to Mistbrook, and I helped negotiate between dryads and that city. Then, I went to Fort Watch, and found that it had been attacked by Fog Creepers…again. I saved the Dawnbringers, and their reinforcements arrived, with the Commander I had talked to along for the ride.

After helping them negotiate with the dryads, I got my writ. Fort Watch is mine. The current, central fort and its walls are under my Grave Node’s command—that one is named Alpha. I’ll be able to keep him there indefinitely, and can talk to him if I meditate for an hour somewhere dark. As I get stronger, he will, and I can expand my influence farther.

Then, I left, heading to Woundmere.I rode on an undead deerlike horse thing called a deelkra. It seems like a lot of the normally quadrupedal creatures are…hexapedal? I think that’s what a six-legged thing would be called. Anyways, the deer has six legs, is what I’m getting at. It made for a pretty smooth ride. Even then, without having ridden anything except one horse back on Earth during my college days, my body was already familiar with it.

But, on my journey, I got a Quest from the god of Curses, who is actually the old god of Fate. I recovered a relic of his, and he helped me to recontextualize what I wanted to do with my power. 

He helped me see that I am, was, and still am, bound by cages. Curses are just Fate by another name (hence his rebrand). Free will did exist, but it was only free will within a constrained series of choices. I had made a Curse of my own with Alpha’s existence as a Grave Node. Every action I took, and the resulting consequence? That was a Curse. And, he helped me realize, not all Curses are negative. Some are positive.

But he didn’t call them blessings…I don’t know why. Maybe something philosophical about how ‘even the best good intentions eventually get repurposed for evil’ or something like that? 

That’s…not very fun to think about.

Anyways, we talked quite a bit, and I came up with my new, rebranded idea. I still want to make Undead Outposts to help alleviate the issues that living people have to deal with. Might as well use corpses, right? They’re just flesh and bones, after all.

But, he helped me realize that going from place to place, finding problems, and fixing them, was only part of what I could do. I could help to break people out of the cages that bound them. Not by destroying the walls, or bars, or whatever analogy you want to use—but by holding the door open. And, by giving them somewhere to go.

Case in point: Mistbrook had people who weren’t able to easily go into the forest without fear of the Fog Creeper threat. Through my power, I dealt with that. Now, the ‘cage’ of being so scared of the forest is gone. They can expand, grow, and live in harmony with the dryads.

Another example, Fort Watch itself, which seems like it is going to be the administrative center of an expansion from Woundmere (overpopulation issues? So I imagine that I am going to be encountering some piss-poor living conditions). Well, with my Grave Node there, and Alpha in control, the scut work that some poor bastard would normally have to deal with—digging ditches, standing guard, whatever—they are free from that responsibility.

So, my plan now is to deal with whatever fucking bullshit William left behind for me (thanks, asshole prior owner of my body). Then, I have some Quest to complete for the god of Curses. After? I need to visit a library. There’s so much I don’t know about this world, and I really need to try and blend in as much as I can. People, places, races, plants, animals…all of it. I need to soak up as much knowledge as possible. Whatever I know, my Grave Nodes will know.

And, eventually, I’ll have a ton of those, spread across the world. Well, that’s the plan, anyways. My own empire of Undead-run cities, all with the same goal—making people’s lives better and giving them a place to go when the curses are broken. I really hope I can get some type of Grave Node teleport. That would be epic. Even better if I could do, like, connected gateways using my soul? That would be badass for connecting cities and giving people the means to leave behind their old lives in favor of something new. 

Being well-known as an other-worlder does not seem like a good idea (in fact, Garran effectively told me to keep it as secret as possible). Some folks at Fort Watch and Mistbrook know the truth…but that can’t be helped. 

Going forward, I need to act like one of them.

Because, in a way, I am, now. The only escape from my situation (as if I wanted to give up this power) is dying. 

No way. 

I have the power to make a difference…so I’m going to. And besides…the more I’ve thought about it, the more I like the idea of being an undead, aloof ruler who just makes things better. I’ve got nothing but time, after all. Being immortal has its benefits.

Well…Immortal to aging. I can still die in other ways. 

Speaking of that, I really should look into a way to get disguised Undead who can be my bodyguards and blend into civilization with me.

Meh. Things to deal with another day.

Book 2 >