Antosfall: Book one factions

There are many races and factions appearing in Antosfall.

None of my other work taking place in Ti'cra has been made available to the public, so I will explain the background of these men and women and beasts here as well as in the book itself.

More factions will be added when time permits :)

The 'Denizens'

These are the remnants of the beastmen that live in a forested region north of the neck of Antos. They are descendants of early barbarians who have long since abandoned their ways to adopt connections with ancient animal spirits instead. There were two tribes before Antosfall, before the great conflagration of the entire province south of their home, two great and ancient tribes that were following the spirits of wolves and bears respectively. These cousin tribes have never known war with one another and have lived in absolute peace since their inception.

When Antosfall occurred, the southern forest of the Den was set to flame and burned to a crisp, effectively displacing the bulk of the wolf tribes. Since the splintering the wolves have gone into hiding or have gone renegade and have not been in touch with their cousin bears who are mourning deeply for the loss. The bearmen resolve to protect what remains of their home, to train up warriors and shamans to deal with the ever encroaching threat to their lives. Scouts and patrols are picked off each day, leaving strange bloated corpses of the alien threat. They are striking out of Antos in small numbers to scout and gather information on the Den, and it falls to the bearmen to find out what they want and ultimately stop them from arriving in force.


The Ironstruck

Many hundreds of years prior to Antosfall, there was a man named Pathius that strode Ti'cra. He was the son of the founder of a holy order called the Iron Paladins, and Pathius himself was a member until he was ejected from the order because of his habits. Pathius liked his women and wine, who can blame him? Pathius has several books written about him and appears in many books that are not, he is a reoccurring character that is crude and blunt, has a great sense of humor and even breaks the fourth wall from time to time.

Before Pathius died, he married a barbarian woman from the Ironskull tribe. While preparing for the future of his children he wrote many books concerning his craft of smithing and the nature of the threats to mankind. These books and this bloodline persisted many hundreds of years into Antosfall, in the form of the Ironstruck, a massive army of heavily armed and armored warriors that have been acting as an autonomous national guard for Ti'cra since it's inception.

This army that finds its origin in an order of holy warriors shows few similarities save practical. They are not holy at all, in fact they may be the opposite. The ideology of the Ironstruck is simple: all things man. They believe anything brought to Ti'cra by mankind is alright, and anything that is not mankind should be destroyed. This army of mercenaries is extremely xenophobic and highly set in their ways.

They have come to encamp around the Scorchgate, to die if they must and block the advancing army of demons with their bodies if it comes to that. For all their habits and dogma, the Ironstruck will lay down their lives to stop the advance into the unburnt territories.

The Arois

Before the time of Antosfall, the continent of Palom was dominated by tyrants that controlled the flow of money through various means, and using this control of gold and silver they essentially enslaved the population of Palom. It was a cadre of sorcerors and mages that came together and expelled the tyrant rules and liberated Palom. These fallen tyrants took what remained of their wealth and holdings and fled to the mountain of Arois, far in the north, beyond even the borders of Palom's northern reaches.

These people became the Aroisan, seen in Antosfall. After many hundreds of years of living in isolation the Arois have become a beneficent and compassionate people, they dedicate their time to education and enlightenment. Most of all, though, they are very concerned with the use of sorcery and the human species. The modern Arois can't remember why their ancestors made it so very clear that sorcery was dangerous and the plague of man, but they have the ancient texts that say to be vigilant and careful and to destroy rogue sorcerors at every turn.

This directive carried down from forgotten years has turned the Arois into a group of mage-monks dedicated to putting down other mages and sorcerors. Believing that they alone are enlightened enough to control the forces of magic through the use of their tomes and runes, the Arois have become singularly skilled at tracking down and policing these threats. Indeed they are somewhat of a myth among mages who practice outside of the Arois owned and operated colleges in Palom, for those who try to commune with the arcane powers of the universe soon hear whispers about hooded men asking about them or following them or watching their homes at night. The Arois are the stuff of nightmare for the rogue mage or sorceror.

In Antosfall, the Arois have dispatched a single virces (Aroisan agent) to lend aid to the containment effort. Ever arrogant and believing that a single young virces will be enough to handle the entirety of the Antosfall incident himself, they have since closed the book on the subject and hold no further meetings as to the demon threat.

The Patriots

This is where it gets fun, boys and girls. When Antosfall came it demolished the majority of the province beneath a flaming fist, but in the capital city of Mumai there were left a group of survivors. These survivors were part of a group of outlaws and rebels called the Patriots, who pre-Antosfall were dedicated to living the anarchist life free of authority and governance and police. The Patriots believe that freedom is the only choice and governing authorities using police to bludgeon their will on the people is a crime against the nature of humanity.

They were involved in organized crime, manufacturing of weapons and the selling of arms to buyers both in and out of Mumai, champions of worker unions and the freedom of choice. These guys are hardcore, badass, leather bound, tattooed, bearded, grizzly biker dudes, minus the bikes. They like booze, guns, and money. Post-Antosfall, they became underground guerilla irregulars hitting the invaders at every turn, liberating slave gangs, demolishing supply lines and generally being a hardassed resistance force that has gone from outlaws to saviors.

The Patriots wrote a manifesto decrying the invaders and distributed it via aircraft over Mumai, the iconic words at the end being a rallying call to all displaced Antosi, addressing the demons the message is clear: leave now or be destroyed. The manifesto is found on every corner and in sweeping piles on every road, it inspires the survivors to band together under their leadership to fight back against the encroaching aliens to drive them back to whatever hell they came from.

When the government and military of Antos fell, it was the Patriots that unleashed a brutal first strike against the demon, and they continue to this day their terrible hidden war against the foe despite the fact that they are outnumbered several thousand to one. They utilize the underground network of infrastructure beneath Mumai to house their war effort, having since relocated much of the surviving technology of Mumai underground. Here they manufacture everything from guns and ammunition to food and water and clothing for their cause.

Found present in all of their endeavors is the Antos flag, be it driven into the chest of a dead demon or tattooed on the chest of a Patriot warrior, they love their country and they are willing to fight to the death for their freedom from what they consider simply another form of oppression.

Antosfall: Book one plot

What exactly is my novel Antosfall about?

So glad you asked.

Antosfall is set in the far future timeline of my own universe taking place on a planet called Ti'cra.

I created the Ti'cra universe when I was 10 years old with a pencil and paper, busy writing the stories and characters in composition books and notepads. When it was created it was a high fantasy universe, think sword and shield and magic and dragons, but over the course of 20 years of writing I have expanded the timeline all the way to the point of an industrial era.

Antosfall is about the coming of this industrial era into a world that has been dominated by myth, beast, and kings.

In Antosfall the world collectively tightens their gut with the coming of an enemy that hasn't been seen in hundreds of years. The world has since come to almost entirely rely on technology over praise to ancient sorcery or reliance on mythical creatures such as dragons. Ramshackle machines with 'thunder-hearts', dynamos of dancing lightning, work and toil for the men and women of Antos until their life becomes nothing more than the pursuit of pleasure.

When the province of Antos reaches a critical mass of hedonism and debauchery, the whole peninsula comes under attack by an eldritch force wholly unknown to the people of the world, an endless army of alien monsters risen from the ground and falling from the sky. This event is known as Antosfall, and in less than a week the entire peninsula of Antos (now called the Scorch) is reduced to ashes.

Before the unknown force of nightmarish foes can look north to the rest of the continent of Palom, a second army arises from the bleeding wounds in the fabric of reality to rout them. Antos is the site of a demonic civil war where one faction seeks to lay claim to the rest of Palom, but is trapped by the army of a second force of demons that have arrived to stop them and bring them home.

Now this is a world that has almost completely forgotten the old ways, the ways of magic and demons and dragons, while it struggles to come to grips with what is happening in Antos. The intelligence reports lend no comfort to the leaders of Palom, for if every army in the entire world rallied at the neck of Antos to address the threat, they would still be outnumbered upwards of 10,000 to 1.

Ti'cra is gripped by fear.

The era of titanic heroes walking her surface is over, there is no powerful warrior-god to come and smite these demons as in days past. Their only option is to come together at the neck of Antos and prepare for an onslaught that may come, if the mysterious second army of demons fails in their attempt to stop the first, an onslaught that they will block with their very bodies between the mountains of the Scorchgate.

Getting Prepared

I registered today with the IRS for a sole proprietorship status to write and self-publish myself, something I have been wanting to do for a very long time. I also applied to Apple for the rights to publish on the iBook platform, so here is hoping I get approved :)

Hello and welcome.

This blog is an information outlet for Matt Milanese.

I am an author and will be using this pipeline to distribute information, updates, and announcements in regards to my work. I intend to begin publishing by the end of August 2013 with my first novel Antosfall, made available on the Apple iBook market.