Lord of the Distant Isles

Part I: Lord of the Distant Isles

Rating: E Status: Completed Main Tags: POV Hans Capon, Mutual Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending

Teaser: Tag along as Hans tries not to fall in love with his squire and fails spectacularly!

⚔️chapter 1⚔️

Part II: Of Lilies and Lions

Rating: E Status: Completed Main Tags: Secret Relationship, Post-Canon, Political Intrigue

Teaser: After leaving the ruins of Suchdol behind, Hans and Hal try to keep their love hidden but this proves harder than expected with old foes rearing their heads, meddling uncles and a looming wedding...

⚔️chapter 1⚔️

Part III: Knight of the Crownless King

Rating: E Status: Ongoing Main Tags: Post-Canon, Political Intrigue, Eventual Happy Ending

Teaser: Hans's world is ruins after the secret is out. To stop von Bergow's plot, he must travel to Moravia to make new allies and maybe find old ones, too...

And just so you know: the beginnings of the heat wave already killed one smut scene. I felt too sweaty to write about cocks, so one of the explicit scenes turned into fade to black instead.

Knight of the Crownless King chapter 22

It's too hot to make cover art for this chapter. So have a meme instead!

Henry's POV chapters are back!

We celebrate the (hopefully) end of this awful heatwave with a Sunday chapter. It's Dadzig roadtrip time!

Around him, dusk settles over the rolling hills of the Vysočina highlands. Rattay—the whole of Sasau—lies far behind them. This’ll be Henry’s second night away from home. The second of God knows how many. Back in Rattay, the progress must be getting ready to depart. Who will protect Hans now? Has he already found a new bodyguard?  The thought makes Henry’s stew even harder to swallow. “Hal? A word.” Radzig’s voice drifts over from beyond the fire, near the edge of the ridge where the retinue made camp an hour ago. He’s in half-plate under a surcoat in Skalitz colours, wearing the same unreadable expression he’s had ever since they shook hands in Pirkstein.  Henry puts down his bowl and walks over.  “Yes, sir?” For a moment, a little frown appears on Radzig’s brow. Gone in an instant. “I’d like to hear your opinion on a matter,” Radzig says and turns around. His head jerks to the outline of a city, squatting by the river in the valley below them. Compact roofs, smoke curling in the air, lights flickering on the massive ring of fortifications. “A viper’s nest,” Radzig says, one hand on his hip, the other smoothing his beard. “Jihlava was under Sigismund’s control in the war. And even now the city leans toward the usurper—partly due to the efforts of one of its leading men, a certain Lord Zajíc of Jemnice. A lesser branch, that one. Hazmburk has too many burrows, it seems…”  Radzig chuckles and flicks a look Henry’s way—only to let it slide past him at once. Like he has since the moment he walked in on Henry with his hand in Hans’s braies. Can’t blame the man for that. He keeps his eyes fixed just off Radzig’s shoulder, too. When he stays silent, Radzig clears his throat and continues: “We could give Jihlava a wide berth and only lose half a day’s ride. Restock on Žerotín’s lands instead. But on the other hand…” There’s a gleam in Radzig’s eye, the corner of his mouth quirks upward. “Liechtenstein has a spy in the city, one of his new associates. If that man has found something, Jobst will want it yesterday. So—what say you, Hal? Shall we risk it?”

Catch up:

Knight of the Crownless King chapter 21

I'm melting. Have an update!

Tomorrow's chapter in a nutshell. After 115k words, Henry's back! And Hans has a hard time acting normal about it...

Catch up:

Knight of the Crownless King chapter 20

After their dramatic flight from Skalná Hora, Hans and Jitka travel to Brno to meet Margrave Jobst—and explain their failure. But it's more than just a tongue-lashing that awaits them on the next stop of the progress...

I'm so bored and hot. Who wants an early update?

Knight of the Crownless King chapter 19

Jitka and Hans scramble to escape from Skalná Hora before Otto von Bergow can make them his prisoners. Along the way, they might have the chance to save someone else...

Thank you for weaving a world for us! Curious what makes a writer so creative.

Haha, my taste is all over the place. My main video game obession is still KCD 1&2 at the moment, I played the hell out of BG3, of course. But I also really enjoy strategy games, like Crusader Kings 3 (one time I kidnapped and ate the pope). Recently I started playing Paralives, mainly for the build mode. But tbh, my steam library is worse than my wardrobe when it comes to games I buy, play a little really enthusiastically and then forget all about it.

I don't have specific documentaries to recommend. I just look up anything free on YouTube and cycle through my special interests, which are Roman emperors and how awful they were, prehistoric history and the black death. You know, all the happy, cheerful stuff! Arte has some really good documentaries.

As to books... I've read too many Fantasy and YA books to recall. But the ones that stayed with me for a long time are some originally written in my native language German, though I think there are English translations. The first proper book with an actual story that ignited my love for reading as a child is "Momo" by Michael Ende. There's a scene in the book where Momo, an orphan living in the ruins of an ancient ampitheatre, plays with her friends and they pretend to be pirates on a ship attacked by a kraken. The scene shows that Momo's imagination is so vivid, even her friends begin to see the ship and the kraken before their mind's eye. As a kid that was an epiphany for me becaues it was the first time I realized that when I read a story, I see a movie in my head.

Two other German books I'd recommend are "Rumo" and "The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear", both by Walter Moers.

In the finale of the Skalná Hora arc, Hans and Jitka will need all their cunning and some luck to escape their predicament!

Hans’s golden head disappears in the crowd as two dozen noblemen are ushered out of the hall like sheep. There’s a loud thud when the black-clad knight closes the door and slides the bar into its brackets. Jitka shudders at the sound.  Trapped. Skalnà Hora’s great hall has just become a holding pen. She sinks back down into her seat, one hand reaching out under the table to clasp Ketka’s shaking fingers. Her sister shuffled over to take Hans’s deserted place. Face pale and wide-eyed, she looks up at Jitka as if she knew what to do. Next to her, Aunt Blažena sits with her eyes closed, lips moving silently in prayer. Looking at them both, Jitka takes a deep breath, trying to suppress the dread rising in her belly. Then she smiles, praying Ketka doesn’t see right through her mask. “It’s alright,” Jitka murmurs, squeezing her sister’s fingers. “Just stay quiet, we’ll be fine.” How? How will this be fine? Free hand worrying at her mother’s cross, she swallows the lump at the back of her throat. Could she have seen this coming? Was there a clue she overlooked—something that might have foretold this turn of events? No matter. She can’t linger on the why. All that matters now is the how. How will they get out of this mess? There must be a way. There always is. One just has to be clever enough to see it. 

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