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ToECS Book One: Tides of Sicklemire

Dust Jacket

Adventure! Intrigue! Before the Elemenstor Saga, before the Wizbits...were the Tides of Epic Conflict. It is nearly one thousand years after the great Sundering, and the Sickle is embroiled in epic conflict. A young man begins to grow into an epically evil destiny, while a noblewoman-explorer tries to uncover the epic dark secrets of the Ultracraggoth mountains--secrets of a terrible tide that threatens to overwhelm the entire Sickle with epic darkness!

Plot

It is thousands of years after The Sundering, and all knowledge of The Shield has been lost. The Sickle is ruled in name by the Twenty-Seventh Cream Emperor, a weak and ineffectual man. Realistically, the landmass is a feudal nightmare, with all power and influence in the Imperial Court at the castle-city of Teisti. Wars are common things, down to the point of a village going to war with itself over one minor lord cutting off another at the weekly Teisti Luncheon Buffet. Meanwhile, a mysterious dark force gathers deep in The Ultracraggoths, preparing to strike at an empire so pathetically divided in minor intrigue it is largely considered paralyzed.

It is in this environment that a young Patik Bane is born to a serving-woman, and grows up doing menial work around Teisti, all the while resenting his low-born fate and listening to the powerful prepare their pathetic food-related backstabbings. But he starts to ponder taking his fate into his own hands when a mission to procure cleaning supplies in Bizarkule causes him to meet a poison-maker. And all the while, a young Lady Ambivilia scours the mountains, ferreting out evil, killing bandits, and searching for the dark influences the mad prophet Skizzlefrok warned her of. There's also a rather gratuitous sex scene involving her and her handmaiden, Lady Arisa. It is of note that in the original Japan release, the image of Ambivilia and Arisa abusing a Battlestaff graced the front cover, despite it being utterly unrelated to the plot.

Meanwhile, Percy Mulligan, a young guard in Bizarkule, finds a routine shopping mission sweeping him out of the city and hopping from town to town when he notices a dark stranger attempting to buy a yam, despite yams being outlawed in the entire Sickle. Eventually, he follows the stranger into the Ultracraggoths, where he comes across an illegal sweet potato banquet held by mysterious dark forces. Rather than bust them, he decides to act as a double agent and pretend to defect, citing a deep love for squash.

By the end of the novel, Duke Hopea dies mysteriously, and Bane, now styling himself Lord Hopebane, has taken his place, and returned to Hopea--where he meets Lopae of Hopea, and begins to plan his next moves. Receiving word her father has been murdered, Ambivilia has returned to Teisti and attempts to warn the general populace of the dangers in the Ultracraggoths, but is ignored when it is revealed that the Luncheon Buffet will be adding Mottled Grey Robin Cheese, distracting the court.