Draconis Memoria is a Low Fantasy Steampunk trilogy written by Anthony Ryan. The trilogy consists of:
- The Waking Fire (2016)
- The Legion of Flame (2017)
- The Empire of Ash (2018)
Set in a world at the height of its own Industrial Revolution, the technological breakthroughs achieved by humans here have been enabled by utilizing the blood of drakes, fire-breathing reptilian beasts endemic to the long-hidden continent of Arradsia. The distilled blood of these creatures can be ingested by a select few humans, known as the "Blood-blessed", granting them incredible powers and fundamentally altering human technology, economy and society as a result.
However, after centuries of harvesting the drakes of Arradsia, the Ironship Trading Syndicate, the most powerful company in the world, comes to a frightening conclusion – drake blood has been steadily losing its potency, and will be rendered wholly powerless in a few generations. Not only will this weaken the company in the face of a resurgent and vengeful Corvantine Empire, it also threatens to wholly overturn the existing world order, undermining the foundation of the new human society. The Syndicate's last hope resides in whispers of the existence of another breed of drake, far more powerful than the rest, and the few who have been chosen by fate to seek it.
Claydon Torcreek is a petty thief and an unregistered Blood-blessed, who finds himself pressed into service by the protectorate and sent to wild, uncharted territories in search of a creature he believes is little more than legend. Lizanne Lethridge is a formidable spy and assassin, facing gravest danger on an espionage mission deep into the heart of enemy territory. And Corrick Hilemore is the second lieutenant of the Syndicate's finest ironship, whose pursuit of a band of ruthless pirates leads him to a far greater threat at the edge of the world...
The series combines aspects of The Quest, Cloak and Dagger and War Fic, eventually veering into Cosmic Horror territory as strange and disturbing revelations about the true nature of drakes, blood-blessed and Arradsia itself begin to emerge...
This series provides examples of:
- Action Prologue: The first book opens with an official recollection of an incident during which a Black drake set to be drained of blood escaped its confines and went on a rampage across town, killing forty-three people and injuring dozens more. The battle against it also serves to showcase several Blood-blessed powers early on.
- Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Few ruins remain of the cities once inhabited by the ancient Arradsians, but what can be found of them proves decisively that the vanished civilization possessed a highly developed language, culture, architecture and engineering, not to mention a keen understanding of drakes.
- Ancient Evil: The White drakes once brought down the entirety of the ancient Arradsian civilization and decimated the Black drake population to near nothing. However, with the last White dead for centuries, only its egg remained dormant, ready to hatch and reassume control over the continent.
- Blood Magic: The Blood-blessed are empowered by drinking (raw or distilled) drake blood. They make up 0.1% of the global population, and can be identified by the reaction their skin has when coming into contact with drake blood – while regular tissue is burned by the substance, a Blood-blessed’s skin will instead turn a pale white. The power of a Blood-blessed depend on their proficiency with different types of blood – most will only excel in one type of power, with very rare exceptions who excel in all of them equally. Different kinds of drake blood will allow different powers to manifest:
- Drinking Green blood heightens the physical abilities of Blood-blessed to superhuman levels and stimulates their natural healing process. Small doses can be consumed by normal humans as panaceum and have been used to help cure numerous illnesses previously fatal to humanity.
- Drinking Red blood grants pyrokinetic abilities, and not of the fireball variety – a Blood-blessed full of Red can instantly ignite anything within their field of vision. This power, while useful in a fight, has found its greatest usage in fuelling the new "thermoplasmic" reactors used to propel ironships at incredible speeds.
- Drinking Blue blood grants the Blood-blessed access to a state called "Bluetrance", in which they can telepathically communicate with other Blood-blessed over massive distances, as well as recall and share their memories with almost photographical precision. However, this state also leaves their physical bodies completely defenceless and allows more experienced users to forcefully pry secrets from less practiced novices.
- Drinking Black blood grants the Blood-blessed telekinesis, which is rightly considered by many the most feared and valuable of the powers. Far from merely grabbing objects, Black can be used to completely immobilize other beings, reach into them to crush their organs or unleash waves of force which hit everything within a radius. The only downside to Black is that it drains from a Blood-blessed the fastest of all blood types.
- Drinking White blood grants the greatest power of all - the ability to accurately see the future, of oneself and the of the world at large. However, this power comes with the price of sealing the fate of any witnessed in the vision, making their future set.
- Bold Explorer: A part of what the Contractors, the men and women tasked with hunting and capturing the drakes, are meant to be. Arradsia is a sparsely-settled and highly-hostile continent, meaning only the bravest (and most well-armed) of travellers dare venture into the areas still blank on official maps.
- Bounty Hunter: The Headhunters are those mercenaries who prefer to hunt Spoiled warbands instead of drakes. They are effectively used to keep Arradsia’s native population under control and prevent the Spoiled from overrunning the coastal colonies. Headhunters are noted for being crazy and violent even by Contractor standards, and tend to live much shorter than them as well – Headhunter companies are twice the size of Contractor ones, and have thrice the turnaround of members.
- Cloak and Dagger: With the war between the Ironship Syndicate and the Corvantine Empire drawing closer, both sides scheme to undermine and rob the other to gain an edge in the seemingly inevitable conflict. Exceptional Initiatives and Cadre both engage in espionage, sabotage and assassination on a regular basis, not to mention all the other minor factions, such as the Co-respondent Brotherhood, enacting their own schemes.
- Corporate Samurai: Or rather, Corporate Shinobi. Lizanne is as skilled in spying, burgling and infiltrating as she is in fighting, shooting and blowing things up (though she usually prefers to work quietly and avoid killing), and she is but out of thousands of Exceptional Initiatives operatives, all working to secure their shareholders’ profit .
- Darkest Africa: Arradsia is very much portrayed this way, being a (rather small) continent possessed of multiple exotic biomes, such as lush jungles, deserts of red sand and volcanic mountain peaks, all inhabited by endemic and unusual creatures. A relatively minor number of foreign colonists operate out of coastal or river-based strongholds, while the interior belongs to the highly aggressive wildlife and even more hostile natives.
- Decadent Court: The Imperial Court in Corvus is composed of the most senior aristocracy in the Empire and, as Electress Dorice puts it, "everyone you will meet there is a self-serving liar". Unsurprising, in an empire only held together through the divine right of the upper classes to rule.
- Draconic Abomination: The White has less in common with modern depictions of fantasy dragons and much more with the ancient view of dragons as malicious, demonic serpents. Though similar in appearance to a Black, the White possesses a human-level intellect, continent-spanning Mind Control over other drakes, can corrupt humans into its Spoiled slaves and communicate with specific Blood-blessed through telepathy, all while remaining in a deep slumber. Most importantly, it is utterly malevolent and cruel, viewing itself as the apex of all natural species. It is less dragon and more scaly Cthulhu.
- Dragons Are Divine: Preacher theorizes that the Spoiled voluntarily fed themselves to the infant White drake in a form of Human Sacrifice, seeing it as divine. As it turns out, he is Right for the Wrong Reasons – the Spoiled are enslaved to the will of a White through Mind Control, but in times past, the non-Spoiled ancient Arradsians worshipped Black drakes instead.
- The Dragonslayer: Contractors, the mercenary adventurers and explorers all across Arradsia, are the people primarily responsible for hunting, capturing and harvesting wild drakes. Composed of some of the hardiest men and women on the continent, the Contractors tend to form small independent companies of five or six members, joining into larger groups in times of crisis or major hunts. Many of them are also permanently employed and protected by the Ironship Syndicate.
- The Empire: The Corvantine Empire is the last sovereign state in existence, surviving in a world of corporate rule through the merciless, totalitarian absolutism of their Emperor and his many enforcers, be it the Imperial Legions or the Cadre and its Blood-blessed agents. Most Corvantines are shown to be highly elitist, classist, stagnant and corrupt, with massive purges of dissidents, brutal massacres of insurrectionists and constant assassinations by the Cadre being a regular occurrence. They are also the other major world power besides the Syndicate, ruling over the better part of a continent and having the second largest number of colonies across Arradsia.
- Epic Ship-on-Ship Action: Hilemore’s story begins with him having just been promoted to Second Lieutenant aboard the fastest ship in the Protectorate’s navy, Viable Opportunity, and as such his POV chapters feature naval combat galore.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Everyone sees the Spoiled as basically subhuman, and not entirely without good reason. Foxbine especially absolutely loathes them and insists they are not people, being disturbingly gleeful at every chance she gets to kill them. The Spoiled themselves, of course, respond in kind, with dividends.
- Later on, the White drake displays this attitude towards humans in general. Its thralls refer to humans as "apes" and the White displays a mix of hatred and contempt for almost all humans it encounters, Spoiled and pure alike. The only exceptions to this genocidal disposition are the White’s chosen Blood-blessed.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Utterly averted. The setting roughly corresponds to the tail-end of the nineteenth-century iN Europe, featuring breech-loading rifles, revolvers, howitzers, ironclad warships and numerous other highly complex pieces of engineering. The existence of firearms is neccesary for ordinary humans to be able to hunt and kill drakes, and also limits the power Blood-blessed sorcerers can exert over the rest of the population, since a bullet kills a Blood-blessed same as it does everyone else.
- Fascist, but Inefficient: For centuries, the Corvantine Empire maintained control by concentrating all political power into the figure of the Emperor, allowing him to rule as cruelly and despotically as deemed neccesary. However, this model has also led to a great deal of stagnation and corruption on all levels of society, with the old aristocracy feeling no need to evolve while the lower classes, denied any opportunity for social ascent, turned to crime to increase their fortunes. Coupled with brutal repression and totalitarian zealotry, the Empire is as brutal as it is clumsy and fragile.
- Firearms Are Revolutionary: The presence of fairly advanced firearms, such as silenced pistols, six-shooter revolvers, repeating carbines and breech-loading rifles, means that hunting and killing drakes is much easier and safer, and also provides Contractors with a much-needed counter to the overwhelming numbers of the native Spoiled.
- God-Emperor: The Corvantine Emperor is said to have proclaimed himself as such, banning and supressing all other religions in favour of his own Imperial Cult, mirroring the real-world developments in contemporary Imperial Japan.
- Mad Oracle: The most widespread religion in Mandinor is the Church of the Seer, centeredaround the figure of the Seer, a semi-legendary prophet granted visions of past and future. The Seer’s most important prophecies revolve around the Travail, an apocalyptic event when drakes are foretold to fall onto the earth from a tear in the sky to enthrall all of mankind to their will. In modern days, theories range about the origins of these visions, from being simply gibberish ramblings of a lunatic to being a particular form of Bluetrance unknown to later users. Nevertheless, the Seer’s teachings retain an ardent following even amidst the ascending "age of reason" around the world.
- Mad Scientist: The Mad Artisan was a famous Corvantine scholar and engineer obsessed with Arradsia, scouring the continent far and wide while inventing and designing hundreds of wondrous machines and innovations. More than a century after his mysterious disapperance, his notes, designs and exploits are still highly sought after by researchers, engineers and treasure-hunters of all sorts, be they from the Syndicate or the Empire.
- Mage Marksman: Given the setting’s technology, magical powers alone no longer cut it on the battlefield, as a well-aimed bullet is just as deadly as (and cheaper than) a blast of fire or force. Thus, Cadre and Syndicate Blood-blessed alike go into battle equipped with at least one, and preferably more, firearms, and most are as adept at using them as they are with their supernatural powers.
- Magic Knight: Though less common than the above, Green blood does afford Blood-blessed a degree of strength and speed which automatically gives them the upper hand in close-quarters combat. Thus, it is sometimes beneficial for a Blood-blessed to cut the distance and fight from up close, and both Exceptional Initiatives and Blood Cadre operatives are taught a mix of martial arts techniques.
- MegaCorp: The Ironship Trading Syndicate is the largest and richest private company in the known world. It pretty much corners the market when it comes to procuring drake blood, possesses the largest and most modern navy in existence, is on the razor’s edge of the world’s technological innovation, has access to a vast network of trained operatives through Exceptional Initiatives and basically runs much of the Mandinorian continent through the so-called Ironship Protectorate. Small wonder that the only power able to challenge it in any capacity is literally The Empire of the setting.
- Mutants: The Spoiled, the native inhabitants of Arradsia, are twisted, misshapen mockeries of mankind. Extremely primitive and almost animalistic in their behaviour, their bones are gnarled and mangled from birth and their flesh is marred by numerous scales, horns and spikes randomly growing from them. It is eventually revealed that the ancestors of modern Spoiled were warped into being this way by being exposed to a special crystal (and subsequently enthralled) by the White drake. After being awoken, the White begins to similarly Spoil thousands of colonists across Arradsia, confirming the Spoiled are not a single natural race.
- Mysterious Antarctica: To the south of Arradsia lies a frozen landmass roughly analogous to real-world Antarctica. Its cold ocean waters are the main habitat of the marine Blue drakes, leading to humans setting up whaling stations and outposts along its shores. However, the ice mass itself remains largely unexplored, home only to secrets of lost knowledge and buried pirate treasure.
- Noble Savage: The Barrier Islanders native to the archipelago surrounding much of Arradsia are presented this way. Their culture is tribal and archaic, they prefer bladed weapons to guns and are fond of elaborate, full-body tattoos. Though somewhat mistrusted and denigrated by the more developed Mandinorians who employ them, most Islanders are presented as highly skilled, loyal and honourable to a fault.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Drakes are native to the Arradsian continent (and only Arradsia — taking them off the continent causes them to drop dead), but are more remarkable for their blood, which can be used to empower a small number of humans. There are four subspecies of drake, Red, Green, Blue and Black. Drinking blood directly from the heart is usually lethal even to Blood-blessed.
- Green drakes seem to be the most common, inhabitting the jungles, praries and rivers and varying in size from 7 feet (jungle greens) to 15 feet (river greens). They can breathe fire and have heightened resistance to it, but cannot fly and only have bony spikes growing out of their shoulder blades, essentially resembling giant, fire-spewing monitor lizards.
- Red drakes are wyverns, and can grow as large as twenty feet or larger. They live in massive swarms mainly in the Badlands and volcanic areas of the Arradsian interior, but hunt alone, leaving them vulnerable to harvesters. Reds can breathe fire and fly, albeit their wings are noted to be different from those of other flying species.
- Blue drakes inhabit the oceans east and south of Arradsia, and can grow to a massive 60 feet. They resemble giant Sea Serpents, and use their serpent bodies to coil around prey which they then kill with their white firebreath.
- Black drakes, the strongest and most majestic of drakes, are solitary hunters and the second rarest kind. Black drakes are usually around 30 feet in length, with massive wingspans and tailends sharp and powerful enough to dismember humans and cut through stone. They are also possibly the most intelligent of drakes, roughly comparable to elephants or dolphins in intellect but not quite human in their thought process.
- The White is the rarest kind of drake, so rare that only three have been known to exist in the history of Arradsia. White drakes are even larger than Blacks, and possess an incredible intelligence. Their most dangerous ability, however, is their power to dominate the minds of Red, Green and Blue drakes, even from entire continents away. This ability also expands to certain blood-blessed. The presence of a White drake has also been known to "spoil" humans, giving them physical deformities and subjugating them to the White's will.
- Penal Colony: Scorazin, The Alcatraz of the Corvantine Empire, is a large walled-off city contaning the worst, most violent and dangerous criminals in the land. Known for its vast deposits of mineable ores, it was essentially repurposed into an open-air prison to ensure a constant supply of cheap labour to mine the oft dangerous and unhealthy shafts below it. These mines, along with the constables only "guarding" the walls, naturally make it a Hellhole Prison, and the lifespan of prisoners after entering is counted in months if they are lucky. Since there is next to no direct oversight from the guards, the prison has evolved into a rather sophisticated Wretched Hive, with its own political factions, currency and even cultural tenets.
- Privately Owned Society: Several decades prior to the start of the story, a massive economic crisis known as the "Blood Bubble" caused most of the world’s governments to lose much of their power to private trading corporations, who alone provided a source of stable employment and social security. Eventually, the companies became powerful enough to straight-up abolish their governing monarchies, ending the "Age of Nations" and entering into the "Corporate Age". The former Kingdom of Mandinor is now known as the Ironship Protectorate, governed only to secure the profits of the Ironship Syndicate and its shareholders.
- Private Military Contractors: The Contractors, aside from being drake hunters and explorers, are also the main military force the Syndicate calls upon in times of armed conflict, constantly waging a series of low-level wars with Corvantine-aligned forces known literally as the "Mercenary Wars".
- Proud Warrior Race: The Varestians, all the way through. Not only are all Varestians, men and women alike, highly trained and exceptionally tough warriors on land and sea alike, their culture also revolves around combat and battle to an almost religious degree. It is noted by Hilemore that Varestia has not seen a large-scale war between the various clans for centuries, largely because any major disputes are settled by duels between the clans’ champions - the rules of these duels are extremely strict and universally respected across Varestia. Indeed, though Varestia was technically conquered by the Corvantines some time ago, the martial nature of its people and its apparently difficult geography means the Emperor largely controls the peninsula in name alone.
- The Quest: Much of the main story revolves around Clay being recruited to partake in a top-secret, highly risky and borderline impossible mission on behalf of the Ironship Syndicate — specifically, his task is to locate and retrieve the legendary White drake. This journey eventually takes him and his companions across much of Arradsia, with action, intrigue, mystery and horror aplenty along the way. In the sequels, this quest evolves from finding the White drake to slaying it, all while continuing to explore the secrets of ancient Arradsia.
- Repressive, but Efficient: The Ironship Protectorate has shades of this, being a form of quasi-government de facto owned by the Ironship Trading Syndicate. The citizenry is governed strictly in accordance with corporate protocol, with many laws being harsh or outright authoritarian, and the measure of power one can acquire is based on stock holdings instead of votes. However, the Syndicate is also extremely meritocratic, with many of its senior executives coming from middle or lower class and having no particular all-encompassing ideology guiding its actions, operating on a ruthlessly pragmatic model of cost-benefit calculations. It should be mentioned that as of yet, no form of democratic, representative government had arisen within the world, and the other major power, the Corvantine Empire, is a very blatant case of Fascist, but Inefficient.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The Corvantine Empire has been wracked by a series of revolutions over the last century, most spurred by the vaguely liberal/anarchist writings of madame Bidrosin. All of them have been quelled in a bloody fashion by the Emperor, leading to the rebels adopting ever more ruthless and drastic tactics. The largest revolutionary force in the Empire, the Co-Respondent Brotherhood, is no stranger to assassination, bombing and torture.
- The Savage Indian: The Spoiled have shades of this, being the native inhabitants of Arradsia whose culture is practically Stone Age compared to anyone else, they are universally hostile to the foreign colonists and are known to commit unspeakable atrocities upon any poor bastard unlucky enough to be taken captive by them. The Syndicate also maintains a price on Spoiled heads, much how Native Americans had a price on their heads in many frontier communities. This is downplayed, however, by virtue of the Spoiled being closer to beastmen than any real ethnicity in appearance and having no discernible form of culture or society.
- Secret Police: The Cadre, the elite intelligence agency of the Corvantine Empire, are very much this, executing traitors, suspected traitors and anyone associated with either with equal amounts of callousness and zeal. They are the main opponents of the Syndicate’s Exceptional Initiatives and employ almost as many Blood-blessed as the former, though their approach tends to be considerably more blunt and violent. When in uniform, their members even don the stereotypical "dark coat and fedora" outfit for bonus intimidation factor.
- Settling the Frontier: The continent of Arradsia was only discovered about two hundred years prior to the start of the story due to a sudden opening of a naval passage through the surrounding archipelago. Thus, it remains a largely untamed and unmapped land, possessed of a handful of colonial outposts whose bravest and foolhardiest inhabitants alone ever dare to venture into the depths of its interior.
- Steampunk: The setting of the series is roughly analogous to late nineteenth century Europe, with pre-modern firearms, steamship equivalents, massive corporations and large-scale colonization of unexplored continents. The differences lay primarily in the power source much of the worlds technology employs (blood-blessed powers) and, of course, with the creatures native to the exotic continent being dragons and primeval reptiles rather than elephants and lions.
- War Is Hell: Whenever combat on a large scale is described, it is rarely a heroic affair, with detailed descriptions of what exactly early modern artillery does to a human body, the frightful realisation of the potential for telekinesis used on living beings or the psychological damage which comes from being shelled for days on end. Characters racking up a mighty body count is also never portrayed as something to boast about, as the psychological impact of having taken so many lives is brought to fore. Fitting, considering the nature of war from the real-world counterpart time period.
- We Have Reserves: The Corvantine military is renowned for this approach, Grand Marshall Morradin in particular. Spanning the better part of a massive continent, a callous disregard for the loss of manpower is also not entirely unwarranted in their eyes, which makes it no less grizzly to behold.
- Wretched Hive: Almost literally — the Hive is a piratical port hidden in the Barrier Isles, established by a large alliance of pirate cartels known as the Directory. Possessing a surprisingly developed architecture and even a constabulary force of sorts, it has become a refuge for all manner of rogues, criminals and dissidents since being established, growing populous and wealthy as a result.
