"Sometimes all you can do is protect those you love. And sometimes you can't even do that."
— Tamox
Medallion is a work by Meredith Foster about coming-of-age, loyalty, trust, and a medallion. It can be downloaded free of charge here
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Set in an unnamed world, the story mostly takes place in an immense forest. Andreya Orifax, queen of the Ilviren people, is frustrated with her life and the responsibilities her position gives her; at the same time, her people are under threat of extinction from Kespa, who killed the previous rulers and is ruling with an iron hand. Dreya doesn't want anything to do with heroism, though - all she wants is to be left to do as she wishes. But after she meets a unique individual named Tamox, she finds herself facing the maturity she never wanted to possess.
The story has two halves, both of which can be enjoyed as a standalone work. One is the novella itself, the other is a series of vignettes and short stories featuring characters from the book and detailing events that happened before or during the story. Dreya, Anshi, and Saela's family feature prominently. The free download contains only the novella, but a deluxe edition of the ebook will contain both halves of the project.
Not to be confused with the Jackie Chan movie The Medallion.
Tropes
- All There in the Manual: the in-progress premium edition of the novel contains illustrations, notes on character, and canonical tidbits not found in the story. Things mentioned include:
- The truth about various characters' sexualities
- The full account of the Battle of the Two Streams mentioned in chapter nine of Medallion proper
- How Anshi encountered the Xarn on her way back to Tralnrt from the above-mentioned battle
- An account of the Fall of Norigoth, detailing how Mayara, Darys, Melane, and Aora escaped from the city with the infant Dreya
- The events leading up to the capture of Saela's mother
- Kespa's journals on her various living experiments
- Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: The Medallion of the title. It's so awesome you don't even need to touch it to use it.
- Awesome Anachronistic Apparel:
- Justified to an extent. Xarn and Ilverin have their own fashions and preferences for clothing and color, so a few characters wear things that wouldn't be out of place in a Star Trek episode despite their societies existing in a vaguely Middle Ages setting.
- Dreya's boots are rubber-soled, with a tread designed to resemble leaves. Also her "traveling dress" has a very modern-looking pleated skirt.
- Backstab Backfire: Krysty attempts to kill both Tamox and Dreya and succeeds in wounding Cassy. That fails, so she attempts to send them to Kespa via a complicated spell, but then Dreya shoots her, preventing her from successfully completing her mission.
- Battle in the Rain: Averted. Even though Chapter Six contains both a fight with a serpentine monster and a downpour, the two do not occur simultaneously.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Subverted. Dreya disguises herself as Kespa in order to escape from a dungeon, but when one of the Myrl questions her orders she decides it isn't worth it and just slaughters them.
- Big Badass Battle Sequence: The able-bodied populations of two races fight against Kespa and her Myrl near the end of the book.
- Bring News Back: Dreya must take a message to Sirold because the Xarn culture is such that only authority figures are trusted by the king.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": A poor translation of Dreya's species name, Ilvir (plural Ilviren, adjective Ilverin) into Integra resulted in most other races calling them "elves".
- Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Dreya's need to explore led to her capture and near-death. Tamox's need to explore revealed an illegal Portal Pool that ultimately saves the day.
- David Versus Goliath: The final fight against Kespa, with Dreya struggling to survive.
- Dreaming of Things to Come:
- Dreya inherited her mother's Seer abilities, but only in a slightly dysfunctional way. She can't control them, and the one time she does dream of the future she has to struggle to figure it out.
- Mayara, as revealed in her short story, only dreams of the future. It nearly drives her mad before she discovers the Prolythe and uses it to rewatch her dreams while conscious.
- Final Battle: The above-mentioned clash where all of the Xarn and Ilverin team up to fight Kespa's armies. Unique in that this is the literal final battle for them - they're expending all their energy and resources in one last stand.
- Find the Cure!: Anshi searches for the antidote that could save Dreya
- Friendship Moment:
- Tamox risking his life to pull Dreya from the bog
- Dreya giving Tamox Anshi's knife
- The entirety of Tamox's plan to save Dreya during the last battle against Kespa could qualify.
- Greater Need Than Mine: Anshi refuses to let Tamox see to her many injuries until he's rescued a poisoned Dreya and tried to heal her.
- Honor Before Reason: After the final battle, as Dreya lay dying, Anshi decided to do something incredibly foolish.
- Hypocritical Heartwarming: At first, Dreya never misses a chance to call Tamox out on his flaws. But after he plays an instrumental role in saving her, she defends him against Keplan.
- Impossible Task
- In the End, You Are on Your Own: Dreya's climactic duel with Kespa. She holds her own pretty successfully, at least until she gets stabbed in the chest.
- Instant-Win Condition: whichever combatant comes out alive from the Ktaria has won victory for their whole army
- Intergenerational Friendship: Dreya and Melane, Valeria and Aora
- Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: Cassy's psi blasts. She can destroy anything not magically constructed, including people, if she's provoked enough, but she never uses it.
- It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Dreya learns this when she realizes that no matter her bloodline or destiny, she's not immune to the people around her being hurt.
- Long Hair Is Feminine: Played with - nearly all the women of the story have long hair, with the exception of Aora, but only Valeria and Mayara could be classified as very feminine.
- Love at First Punch:
Word of God says Mayara and Darys fell in love this way.
- Misapplied Phlebotinum: Aora's explosives. She attempts to use them in construction.
- My Nayme Is: Melane (pronounced "Melanie"), Krysty, Treyn (Train), Cassy
- No Ontological Inertia:
- When Kespa dies, her fortress remains standing, and it stays that way. The Myrl, however, draw their life energy from the Medallion and are given life by Kespa; when she dies they cease to exist.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Kespa's short story has her musing on the death of Krysty and her estrangement from family, nearly venturing into
Jerkass Woobie territory.
- Portal Pool: the Prolythe. Though it also acts as a communicator and a surveillance device.
- Restraining Bolt: Exists in all of Cassy's species for unknown reasons. It takes Kespa's Mind Rape for Cassy herself to take a level.
- The Reveal: Neither Anshi nor Mayara are as dead as Dreya thinks.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: the entire Orifax family is the embodiment of this trope, not to mention Dreya's role drives the plot.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Tamox's justification for going after Dreya during the final battle and convincing the others to tag along.
- Shout-Out:
- Anshi's mother Treyn is named after Train Heartnet.
- An exchange in chapter six lifts dialogue from Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
- When Dreya stabs a Myrl to avoid its questions, she mutters "Boring conversation anyway."
- Dreya's last words to Anshi reference a song called "The Sound of Drums".
- Space Whale Aesop: The message is actually supposed to be "Don't let life stop you from living". Whether that's clear or not remains to be seen.
- Straight for the Commander:
- During the Final Battle, both sides' goals revolve around killing the opposing leader.
- Kespa ultimately uses the Medallion to teleport directly to Dreya's side and kidnap her for a forced single combat.
- Strange Salute: The Quirlwing greeting is a long, slow nod with eyes closed.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Anshi, during her captivity, is immobilized on a table via Mind Rape. Since Kespa is a Combat Sadomasochist and Nightmare Fetishist, she keeps a lot of prisoners on tables.
- Talk to the Fist: Dreya's conversation with Valeria upon her return to court ends this way.
- Time Skip: Krysty's death interrupts a spell in progress, sending Dreya and Tamox two years into the future.
- Time Travel: Used inadvertently because Dreya shot the person casting the spell. Going two years into the future? Fun...
- Translation Convention: The characters speak Integra for the most part, a blend of the native Xarn language and Ilverin, Dreya's tongue. In fact, Integra is becoming the most common language, but the races still teach their native languages for posterity's sake
- Traveling at the Speed of Plot: Justified, as the trees in Quirlwing territory have a spell on them that shortens travel time to about 1/10 of its normal length.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Tamox and Saela, in particular, show ambivalence toward killing any of the Myrl since they're technically innocent of the crimes they're committing. Dreya and the Ilverin are apathetic, since the Myrl aren't really "alive" in their opinion, and the rest of the Xarn aside from Saela see the Myrl as abominations and happily kill them.
- After the capture of her mother, Saela refuses to kill any Myrl out of respect and fear.
- While Rome Burns: Valeria, during her time as ruler, cared nothing for the war that was going on and chose to bask in the opulence of being queen, not even realizing that her people never won a single battle during her reign.
- Zerg Rush: Kespa's Myrl aren't very skilled fighters, but the sheer numbers of their forces mean that they're a challenge to fight if you aren't careful.
