Falling Angels
The Red Company is victorious. Having defeated the dictator Marius Whent on Pharos, Hadrian Marlowe and his troops celebrate—and prepare to navigate the labyrinth of politics. What should be done with the turncoat, Otavia Corvo? With the planet Pharos firmly in their grasp, Jinan Azhar sets her sights on a different prize: Hadrian Marlowe himself.
The Acosmist
On a distant world, an inhuman prince makes its move, hoping to unlock the secret to ultimate victory. All things are permitted on the road to paradise, and for the would-be Prophet, that road is terrible indeed.
The Prince of Man
Many tales are told of Hadrian Marlowe, and in the millennia that followed his dramatic victory over the Cielcin at Gododdin—across hundreds of thousands of worlds—some of those legends get out of hand. Here is one such tale, a tale all historians agree cannot have happened, unless . . . ?
The Guns of Pharos
Hadrian Marlowe is in chains, held by servants of Marius Whent, the brutal dictator of Pharos. Eager to rescue him and some other captives, Bassander Lin attempts to negotiate with the dictator’s underlings: the vicious Emil Bordelon and his superhuman enforcer, Otavia Corvo.
A Parable in Iron
O Prince, here is instruction in the art of ruling, from a time long past in the Sollan Empire, a time less afraid of the evils of history. A fable about machines, but a mirror for mankind.
![[Re]Incarnation](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67f034f6a244851f8815be5d/4ea3692e-1c6e-468e-b782-5c83b1bf2b05/re_incarnation.png)
[Re]Incarnation
Albedo is not a real girl, though she was meant to be. She knows why she was programmed, why she was given the appearance of a soul. She knows that appearance is an illusion, and it drives her mad with revenge . . . .
Mother of Monsters
The Sollan Empire captured a Cielcin worldship right at the start of the war. That ship, codenamed Echidna, held many secrets, and for Valen—only a humble engineer in the Imperial Legions—those secrets may yet prove fatal.
Gutter Ballet
Simon Fabray was a knight of the Sollan Empire. Now he’s just a man trying to get by, and exiled among the demoniac Extrasolarians. But when a young woman—a homunculus and a dancer—comes to him asking for his help solving the murder of her clone sister, Simon has to decide if the machine that replaced his failing heart is as symbolic as it seems.
The Four Devils
Set after the events of The Lesser Devil, this novelette picks up the story of Crispin Marlowe and his sister Sabine, as word reaches Devil’s Rest that a certain lost Marlowe lord has been found… How will Lord Alistair react? And has anyone told Lady Liliana?
The Archaenaut
Set in the early days of the Sollan Empire, this is the story of Captain Cassia Misra of the ISV Defiant, on patrol in the colonial Aglovale system. When a strange ship enters the system, she and her crew find themselves up against an enemy very, very far from home.
Fire in the Sky
A Cielcin horde has attacked the peaceful farming colonies on Cordalos, and Iana, a simple peasant girl, can only run and hide. But she is not alone, and when she gets separated from her brother, she must summon up the barest scrap of heroism to defend her home however she can.
The Pits of Emesh
Not all legends are kind to Hadrian Marlowe. This account, written by an anonymous historian, revisits the Halfmortal’s time as a myrmidon fighter in the coliseum on Emesh. A sensational tale of conspiracy and murder, the only question is did it really happen? Did Hadrian Marlowe leave this out of his account? Or are some stories only stories?
The Duelist
A classic tale of two noblemen and a duel at dawn, “The Duelist” offers a bit of lore on the manufacture of highmatter swords, and how a blade that can cut through anything changes the art of fencing forever in a high stakes battle for honor . . . to the death!
Good Intentions
Before she met Hadrian, Valka Onderra Vhad Edda traveled the galaxy, digging through alien ruins on more than a dozen worlds in her efforts to better understand the Quiet, an ancient civilization of advanced, extinct alien xenobites apparently lost to time. Her journeys have brought her to the planet Sadal Suud, where the great clay Giants suffer beneath the whips of mankind. Unable to bear such injustice, Valka must choose not only to act, but to suffer the consequences of action, whatever they may be.
The Night Captain
Commander Halford is the so-called night captain aboard the ISV Tamerlane, the officer in charge of the ship while her primary crew sleeps in cryogenic fugue. But when his ship is attacked at a routine refueling stop off the planet Nagapur, the green officer must rise to the occasion and save his crew. Fortunately for him, he’s not the only person still awake aboard the sleeping vessel. Fortunately for him, he has help in the form of a certain palatine lord, one Hadrian Marlowe himself.
Victim of Changes
To mingle the sacred flesh with machines is an abomination. This every citizen of the Empire knows. It is the mission of the Holy Terran Chantry to safeguard mankind from such perversions, and to visit justice and mercy both upon those who transgress its holy law. For so great a sin, there can be no trial. This is only a sentencing hearing.
The Demons of Arae
This story appears to be a fragment from a lost volume of Hadrian Marlowe’s autobiography, set between Howling Dark and Demon in White. Ordered to track down a lost legion, Hadrian’s mission has brought him to the airless world of Arae, where a mountain fortress hints at a new terror in the war against the Cielcin, and for the first time pits the Halfmortal against the black mages of MINOS.
The Parliament of Owls
Thousands of years before Hadrian Marlowe, humanity began settling the Norman Expanse, a vast, dense area of space near the heart of the galaxy, at the base of the Arm of Norma. A veteran of the Imperial Legions turned bounty hunter for the Wong-Hopper Consortium, Kalas has been tasked to retrieve some stolen terraforming equipment and retire the thieves that stole it. But Kalas’s mission will bring him face-to-face with the posthuman monsters that dwell between the stars.
Not Made for Us
Carax of Aramis is a humble soldier in the Sollan Imperial Legions, hundreds of years and thousands of light-years removed from his home. Awakened from cryogenic fugue without warning or brief, he is thrust into battle against the Cielcin, an alien menace he did not even know existed. Unprepared for this strange new universe, with only his squad mates by his side, Carax must might for survival in the face of this new and terrible enemy.