"When you heard that music, it felt like you’d known it your whole life. That music… it made you feel things you didn’t know you could. That man with the frailing hand made you feel like you could take on the whole doggone world."
"It had been twenty years since the people had risen up and been smashed back into the ground."
Twenty years ago, in the midst of a terrible famine, the people of the Kingdom of Mindolach rose up in defiance against the Crown, inspired by the words and the music of a man known only as the Green Bard. The rebellion was crushed, and the Bard disappeared.
Now, as crops begin to fail once more in Mindolach, young Orphia Dain discovers a mysterious instrument in a forest cave. Newly equipped with magical abilities she doesn't fully understand, she will journey across the breadth of the kingdom to seek out the sorcerers of Great Rock and, joined by a hillbilly wizard, a weary veteran, a mercenary swordswoman, and a highwayman, try to revive the spirit of revolution.
The Green Bard is a fantasy novel I have been working on for months now, set in a world based on the American South, Appalachia, and Ireland, with elements of Imperial Germany and Russia. The novel is intended to be the first instalment in a series titled A Blessing From Below. I will be publishing my first draft as it is written, and have made the first four chapters and prologue available now. I hope you will enjoy it, and welcome your feedback!
Read The Green Bard below:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
(cover art drawn by @terrafey)
snowghoul
vaporwave
origamiaround
kianamaiart
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner
